NEWS

Stories, on Web, of those who lived history offered as resource for N.C. teachers

By L.J. TOLER
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- In training this week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 29 North Carolina teachers will learn to use UNC’s "Documenting the American South" collection online to enhance eighth- and 11^th-grade history lessons.

Surfing the site and hearing from UNC professors about its historical and literary highlights will comprise their training, said Robert Anthony, curator of the North Carolina Collection in UNC’s Wilson Library. They also will create lesson plans to take home and will earn continuing education credits.

Registration is full for the program, set for Wednesday through Friday (June 11-13) in House and Wilson libraries. But Cheryl Mason Bolick, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Education, said she hopes this first program will lead to others so teachers statewide can become well versed in the site’s educational potential. She has a grant application out and her fingers crossed.

Located at http://docsouth.unc.edu/ on the World Wide Web, the site was created in recent years by the University Libraries. It offers first-person narratives – descriptions of history by those who lived it. The writers were farmers, slaves, abolitionists, Civil War soldiers, pastors, Native Americans and many ordinary souls describing life in these United States in early times. Titles include Mary Chestnut’s diary, featured in Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary.

Among many other resources on the site are biographies, relevant fiction, posters, church materials and such state documents as fuel conservation guides used during World War I. Title pages, illustrations and photos also were digitized to give users worldwide a sense of actually holding these rare books and manuscripts, many of which are housed in UNC’s libraries.

"In the past, the kinds of primary sources in ‘Documenting the American South’ were available mainly to faculty and students in institutions of higher education," said Dr. Joe Hewitt, university librarian. "Giving K-12 students and teachers convenient access to these materials could have a profound impact on the teaching of history and social studies in the public schools. This workshop to help teachers incorporate this material into their curricula is an important companion to making the materials available on the Web."

The school, the library and faculty members from the UNC College of Arts and Sciences partnered to present the training. Among faculty who will speak are Dr. William Andrews, an English professor and expert in African-American literature, and history professor Dr. William Barney.

About half of those participating are from local school districts – Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Chatham, Durham, Orange and Wake counties. Others are from Cherokee, Mooresville, Whiteville and Bertie, New Hanover, Mitchell and Buncombe counties.

"They will all create instructional materials while they’re here, and we’ll follow up with them and observe the teachers using these resources in their classrooms," Bolick said.

The training will be funded by the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services, one of several agencies whose grants enabled creation of "Documenting the American South." Grants totaled nearly $670,000, from 1997 through 2003, supporting, mostly, employment of graduate students. Their job was to digitize the library’s rich collections of diaries, letters, photos and more.

The institute funded two of seven sections on the site: "The North Carolina Experience: Beginnings to 1940," with a grant of $160,507 in 2000, and "The Southern Homefront: 1861-1865," with $138,938 awarded in October 1998. The former comprises some 30,000 pages of text, 3,000 images and 20 oral history interviews and workplace songs that illustrate the state's past.

That section was completed under-budget, Anthony said. So the library sought and received institute approval to use the balance of the grant for this week’s teacher training.

"Documenting the American South" now comprises seven segments and more than 1,240 texts, plus photos, illustrations and more. Additional funding sources included the Library of Congress with the Midwestern communications company Ameritech, the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Library Services and Technology Act grant distributed through the State Library of North Carolina.

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Contacts: Cheryl Mason Bolick, 919-962-9890, cbolick@unc.edu; Robert Anthony, 919-962-1172, ranthony@email.unc.edu; Natalia Smith, 919-962-9590, nsmith@email.unc.edu

News Services contact: Larua Toler, 919-962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu