University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Although colleges and universities around the state should be checked for local resources, the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) has an unusually large and useful collection. Housed in specially designed facilities in the Louis Round Wilson Library, the North Carolina Collection preserves an incomparable assemblage of literary, visual, and artifactual materials illustrating four centuries of the colony and state of North Carolina. Its uniqueness is explained by a distinguished history of missionary zeal, unwavering leadership, and citizen support.
The North Carolina Collection traces its origins back to the establishment of the North Carolina Historical Society, organized in 1844 by University President David L. Swain. In its first report the following year, the Society recorded the acquisition of thirty-two publications and eleven manuscript collections. Though the Society had a tenuous existence for many years, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century President Kemp P. Battle took up Swain's collecting mantle and acquired additional materials. After Louis Round Wilson became University Librarian in 1901 he organized the North Carolina materials into a special department of the Library.
Today more than 120,000 books and 78,000 pamphlets form the core of the North Carolina Collection, but these formats are supplemented by newspapers, journals, maps, broadsides, photographs, audiovisuals, microforms, and other materials. The department is divided into several administrative units of public interest. These include the Reference Section, North Carolina Collection Gallery, Photographic Archives, and Photographic Services. Click here for the library.
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