November 1999

Documenting the American South

Copyright: The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Used with permission.

About the image above: Burton, Annie L. (b. 1858?) "Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days". Boston, Ross Publishing Company, 1909.

Documenting the American South (DAS) is the digitized and encoded full-text collection of works on Southern history, literature and culture from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Academic Affairs Library. The collection is freely available to anyone with Web access and may be found at http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/.

Within the collection, works are organized by five projects: "North American Slave Narratives;" "A Library of Southern Literature to 1920;" "First-person Narratives of the American South;" "The Southern Homefront, 1861-65;" and, most recently, "The Church in the Southern Black Community." More than 380 works have been published electronically, and current funding supports the electronic publication of more than 500 additional books and manuscripts by the end of 2000.

In 1996, the University of North Carolina Library celebrated its bicentennial as the nation's oldest state university Library, and DAS was the university library's bicentennial gift to the university, the state, and the world. At that time, the collection contained six works. Three years later, its value and its potential are more apparent than ever. Thanks to the guidance of an editorial board of campus scholars, significant works were chosen which support formal teaching and research in American history and culture. In addition, the Library has discovered that the collection enriches the lives of thousands of Web users who read for recreation or personal enrichment. DAS superbly fulfills the Library's public service mission, and the Library is committed to the long-term availability and continued growth of the collection.

Copyright: The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Used with permission.

About the image above: Remarks on the Manufacture of Bank Notes, and Other Promises to Pay. Addressed to the Bankers of the Southern Confederacy. Columbia, S.C.: Steam Power-press of F.G. DeFontaine, 1864.

Digital collections are difficult to establish and sustain. The Library welcomes this opportunity to share its work with the largest possible community of users and to thank its outside funders: the Delmas Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Library of Congress / Ameritech Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their critical support.

Every library with access to OCLC is invited to add to its own online catalog the MARC bibliographic records for the e-books and manuscripts now included in "Documenting the American South."

Contributed by:
Joe A. Hewitt
Associate Provost for Libraries
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill