The Special Collections Reading Room at the John C. Hodges Library has a sleek new look. And the Elaine Altman Evans Exhibit Area in the first-floor galleria is allowing a new audience to discover our special collections. You are invited to an event celebrating these exciting enhancements to Special Collections on Thursday, April 27. A … Continued
Robert Morgan, the acclaimed author of Gap Creek and The Road from Gap Creek, will speak about the impact of Willma Dykeman’s fiction and non-fiction in his own work at the beginning of a two-day tribute to Dykeman on April 7 and 8. The events are sponsored by the Library Society of the University of … Continued
Special Collections continually seeks new areas on which to focus acquisitions. We look for topics with regional significance that have potential for broad impact. One such area is the ancient art of moonshining. Bootlegging has long been the subject of storytelling in the hills of the Appalachian Mountains. The illegal distillation of spirits was a … Continued
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries has created an online digital collection of photos and home movies of the Smokies taken in the 1940s,’50s, and ’60s by a Townsend businessman. Folksongs performed by local musicians have been added to the originally silent film clips. Watch and listen: Views of Gatlinburg in 1941. [Music recorded by … Continued
From the 1940s through the 1960s, William Derris, owner of the Derris Motel in Townsend, traveled by automobile around the accessible parts of the Smokies recording the people and scenery in both slides and silent film. He used the images and films to entertain and inform the guests at his hotel. His collection was donated … Continued
William Blount and John Sevier are early American politicians that you would expect to be represented in the University of Tennessee Special Collections manuscript collection. But other members of our founding generation represented in UT’s Special Collections might surprise you. For example we have three items from George Washington, the Commander in Chief of the … Continued
Two historically important books, acquired by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have been added to the library’s special collections. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved person in the household of a prosperous Boston family. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (published 1773) was the first published book by an African-American woman. Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, … Continued
Join us for a brown bag lecture, “‘Terra Incognita:’ The Great Smoky Mountains in Print,” at the East Tennessee History Center, March 12, 2014, from noon to 1:00 p.m., to hear highlights from the recently published bibliography. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Terra Incognita is the most comprehensive bibliography of sources related to the Great Smoky Mountains ever created. … Continued
The UT Libraries is holding two contests that offer cash awards. The STUDENT ART IN THE LIBRARY juried exhibition seeks drawings, graphic design, prints, photography, paintings — any two-dimensional work — for display. Selected works will be on display in 135 Hodges Library throughout the spring semester. The top three works get cash prizes ($300, … Continued
During the Civil War, Knoxville, Tennessee was almost equally divided between Confederate and Union sympathizers. Professor Tracy McKenzie, author of the book on the subject — Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War — will offer a lecture in the John C. Hodges Library on Thursday, November 14. The public is … Continued