News Release

By JIM WALSH
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL – Cooking, stories for children and Wilson Library’s 75^th anniversary will be among program topics offered this academic year by Friends of the Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Free and open to the public, the programs, in Wilson, will be:

Oct. 12, 5:45 p.m. Moreton Neal will discuss her new book "Remembering Bill Neal: Favorite Recipes from a Life in Cooking," from UNC Press. The book examines the role of her former husband, the late Bill Neal, in the rising popularity of Southern regional cooking. The program will follow a reception at 5 p.m.

Oct. 21, 3:30 p.m., 5 p.m. "The Louis Round Wilson Library: Celebrating 75 Years of Public Service," tours, exhibit opening and talk by University Librarian Emeritus Joe Hewitt.

UNC’s special collections will hold open house and offer tours from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. The collections are the North Carolina and Rare Book collections and the manuscripts department. The department houses the Southern History and Southern Folklife collections, general and literary manuscripts and the University Archives.

The exhibit, up through Feb. 13 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, will open with a reception at 5 p.m. It will document the history and development of the building and the library with displays of photographs, artifacts, period books and information about public services offered in the building throughout its history.

Hewitt will speak at 5:45 p.m. on "75 Years of Wilson Library: An Enduring Monument to Learning."

Nov. 11, 5 p.m. "Ferris in Focus: The Work of William R. Ferris," an exhibit of the historian’s photographs, sound recordings, moving-image materials, personal papers and more, will open in the Manuscripts Department at 5 p.m.

Ferris, a UNC history professor, adjunct professor in the folklore curriculum and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, will speak at 5:30 p.m.

The exhibit, up through Dec. 31, will highlight Ferris’ work and relationships with figures in Southern music and culture, including Alex Haley, B.B. King, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren and Eudora Welty. Also featured will be lesser-known folk including blues musicians, gospel singers, artists and a man who played music on a broom wire attached to the side of his house. Ferris’ work as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, from 1997 to 2001, also will be traced.

Dec. 9, 5:30 p.m. The 13^th annual Winter Stories Program for children of all ages will feature music and poetry performances by library employees Jeffery Beam, Kate Barnhart and Jill Shires. A reception at 5 p.m. will precede the program.

Jan. 13, 5 p.m. "Southern Sources: An Exhibit Celebrating 75 Years of the Southern Historical Collection," will open in the Melba Remig Saltareli Room. Dr. Jacquelyn Hall, director of UNC’s Southern Oral History Program Julia Cherry Spruill professor of history, will speak in the Rare Book Reading Room at 5:45 p.m.

April 7, 5 p.m. The exhibit "A Talent to Deceive: Mystery and Detective Fiction in the Rare Book Collection," will open in the Melba Remig Saltareli Room with a reception. An expert on the genre, to be announced, will speak in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room at 5:45 p.m.

For more information contact Liza Terll at 962-4207 or liza_terll@unc.edu.

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(Jim Walsh is a sophomore journalism major from Winston-Salem.)

News Services contacts: L.J. Toler, 962-8589