SCRC News

contributed by Beth Debold. It is important to remember that rare books, or any rare material, are never valuable solely due to their age. However, many librarians, researchers, and other library users seem to have a special yen for the oldest items. I thought I might share NCSU’s oldest complete printed item with you today. NCSU has [...]

Contributed by Darby Reiners and Ashley Williams. We started to tackle the processing of the Animal Rights Network Records in August and have made a significant dent in them. The collection is massive, containing over 250 boxes, and at first seemed quite daunting. Our first step was to work with groups of material that were more [...]

If you heard the cow mooing out on the brickyard this morning, you probably realized that today starts Agricultural Awareness Week here at North Carolina State University and across the nation!  In celebration, we’ll be highlighting materials we’ve digitized for Cultivating a Revolution, our agricultural digitization project in the Special Collections Research Center, all week. To [...]

The North Carolina State University, Office of Public Affairs, News Services Records have recently been processed, with the new and improved collection guide available here:  http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/ua014_011.  This guide can be used to request files that may be of interest to researchers of University History, especially those wanting to learn more about faculty and staff members [...]

The Special Collections Research Center was the recipient of a 2012 Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). This two-year grant will enable comprehensive collections documenting the animal welfare and animal rights movements to be arranged, described, and made available for research. Work on this grant began in June 2012 with [...]

With contributions by Anne Barrett Last Sunday, the Super Bowl was not only an exciting game of football, but also featured a much talked about commercial about farmers, which happens to fit well into the theme of our current digitization project, Cultivating a Revolution. The commercial is the Dodge Truck commercial called “God Made a Farmer,” which [...]

Contributed by Kristi Krueger. There are currently 18 North Carolina Agricultural Research Stations.  Back in 1955, there were 16.  Why so many?  Promotional pamphlets for stations from 1959 provide some explanation. This one for the Piedmont Research Station notes that in order to advise farmers across North Carolina, research has to be conducted in different spots [...]

With the much-anticipated NC State v. Carolina basketball showdown approaching this Saturday, it is fitting that we highlight some of the Athletics memorabilia contained in the University Archives Memorabilia Collection (collection guide now available).  Some of the Athletics memorabilia in the collection pertains to the 1983 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship won by NC State under [...]

The mission of the Special Collections Research Center is to make accessible the rare, unique, and fragile materials that support the research and teaching missions of North Carolina State University. We have two basic types of collections which most of our users are familiar with: University Archives collections are materials produced by the university offices [...]

Did you know North Carolina is the second largest grower of Christmas trees in the country?  The state is second only to Oregon.  This year, for the 12th time, a North Carolina fraser fir was selected to be the official White House Christmas Tree.  It was grown by an NC State Agricultural Institute alum.  You [...]

Contributed by Kristi Krueger The bug above is a boll weevil, an insect that feeds on and lays eggs in the bolls of cotton plants, ruining the fiber.  A document newly available online from the North Carolina State University Entomology Department records reports that by the early 1980s, the bugs had done over $12 billion in [...]

Contributed by Anne Barrett While scanning records from the Department of Entomology at NC State for the Cultivating a Revolution digitization project, the lyrics of a song kept coming to mind. Burl Ives, well-known narrator of the 1960s animated film “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” wrote and performed the song “Ugly Bug Ball” in the 1963 [...]

Contributed by Kristi Krueger A collection of papers from the NCSU Entomology Department are now available online through the Cultivating a Revolution Project. Contained in this collection is a folder of copies of letters written mostly during the 1930’s by Zeno Metcalf.  Metcalf was the head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology for almost 40 years, [...]

The University Archives Memorabilia Collection, (collection guide now available), includes several interesting furniture pieces with ties to the University’s history.  One is the desk of Dr. Charles W. Dabney, Jr.  Dr. Dabney accepted the position of Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and State Chemist in 1880 and became an active member of the Watauga [...]

A guide to the University Archives, Memorabilia Collection has recently been made available online in commemoration of the 125th Anniversary of the founding of NC State.  This collection contains primarily three-dimensional objects from the University’s history, including: furniture pieces, paintings, scientific instruments, trophies, personal artifacts from alumni, professors, and chancellors, pennants and flags, student military [...]

The smell of fried food is in the air, signifying that today is officially opening day of the fair! Earlier this week we posted about some of the great images we have of the North Carolina State Fair in year’s past.  In the past year, we have digitized several films from the NC State Fair  for [...]

contributed by Samatha Rich. It’s all fun and games at the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center! In honor of the North Carolina State Fair, we’ve searched our collections and identified a few of our favorite fair images. From chickens, to the Pirate Ship, the Special Collections Research Center has it all! To browse through more images [...]

Contributed by Kelly Murray and Samantha Rich For awhile now NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center has been chronicling the lives of former NC State student leaders by gathering oral histories of alumni who held prominent leadership roles on campus and within the state. The list of interviewees has included past Student Body Presidents, Student Senate [...]