Manuscripts, southern historical materials get new curator – who’s been there before

Walter C. (Tim) West, who worked in UNC’s Wilson Library from 1978 to 1994, has returned in fine style as the new curator of the manuscripts department and director of its Southern Historical Collection.

“I’ve got a history here, so I knew what an amazing place it is,” said West, who grew up in Charlotte. “I knew how great the staff is and how rich the collections are. This is a wonderful opportunity for me. There are huge riches here in terms of resources for research and discovery.”

West will oversee the department’s four divisions: the Southern Historical Collection, the Southern Folklife Collection, university archives and general and literary manuscripts.

While the department already gets steady traffic, West said, he hopes to raise its profile, perhaps with special programming, an open house, newsletters and other efforts. “It seems to me that we are physically a little off the beaten path up here on the fourth floor of Wilson Library,” he said. “We’re thinking of new ways to get the word out.”

West also aims to “continue the very productive collecting program already going on here.”

Previously, from 1994 until this fall, West was director of collection development at the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library at Duke University. He coordinated collecting efforts and focused on acquiring materials in special fields including Southern history and culture and American literature.

West curated exhibits including “Reynolds Price as Writer, Teacher, Mentor and Guide” in 2001 and initiated two new annual events: a Special Collections Open House and a “Writers on Writing” event. The latter brings to Duke a writer whose papers are in the library’s collection, for meetings with classes and public readings.

At UNC, West headed technical services for the Southern Historical Collection from 1982-1994. He also directed three projects funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was an assistant archivist for the collection from 1979 to 1982 and previously was a library assistant.

West earned a bachelor’s degree in English, with distinction, at Duke in 1969 and two master’s degrees at UNC, in teaching English in 1972 and social work in 1976. He has completed 30 graduate credits in American history at UNC.

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Viscomi wins national award for online Blake Archive

Dr. Joseph Viscomi, the James G. Kenan distinguished professor of English literature at UNC, is a co-recipient of the Modern Language Association Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition for co-editing the online William Blake Archive.

The archive, available free to the public at www.blakearchive.org, includes Blake's poetry and about 4,000 images from his illuminated books as well as his paintings, drawings and engravings. The other co-editors sharing the award are Drs . Morris Eaves of the University of Rochester and Robert N. Essick of the University of California, Riverside.

The award marks the first time the prestigious honor was bestowed for an online work.

"The William Blake Archive is a dazzling combination of hypertextually organized texts, bibliographical and historical commentaries, and beautifully reproduced visual images, including thousands of plates of Blake drawings, watercolors, and manuscripts," wrote the MLA awards committee in announcing its selection. "If, as has been frequently suggested, the future of editorial scholarship lies in online editions, the William Blake Archive has set a high mark for future editorial practice through its clarity, user-friendliness, beauty, and erudition."

The William Blake Archive is administered by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia.

The Modern Language Association Prize, awarded each odd-numbered year since 1995, is one of 17 awards that will be presented on Dec. 28 during the association's annual convention, held this year in San Diego.

Viscomi has received numerous grants and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanties Research Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Getty Program Grant, and a National Endowment for Humanities Preservation and Access Grant. An experienced printmaker, painter, and curator, he is especially interested in British Romantic literature, art, and printmaking. He is the author of over thirty-five essays, monographs, and exhibition catalogues, including Prints by Blake and His Followers for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University.

He is also the author of Blake and the Idea of the Book a study of the production, editing, and dating of the illuminated books, which has overturned much of the conventional wisdom about Blake^s illuminated-book medium, and which was chosen as one of the outstanding books for its publication year by the Association of College and Research Librarians. He is also co-editor, with Morris Eaves and Robert Essick, of William Blake's Illuminated Books, vol. 3, and with Robert Essick, vol. 5. Video, photographs, music, and text of his theatrical adaptation of an early Blake satire are also online, at http://www.ibiblio.org/jsviscom/island/.

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