Today, we’re looking back on our 2023 accomplishments and impact! We believe that our staff and community of colleagues, donors, researchers, and visitors are making a positive impact in contributing to the collective memory of Buncombe County and WNC. Thank you to each and every one of you who have been part of our community this past year.
Help us gauge our impact and plan for future programs and services by completing this short survey. This survey is anonymous, and intended for people who have participated in BCSC’s public programs this year. If you would like to offer us more feedback, please feel free to email us at packnc@buncombecounty.org.
So, what did our patrons get up to in 2023?
We track how many people attend our events, how many patrons visit the Special Collections reading room, whether to get reference help, perform self-guided research or simply to browse (door count); as well as how many reference questions we answer via in-person questions, phone calls, or email.
This year, BCSC welcomed 949 participants to 35 public programs here in Pack Memorial Library as well as other library branches, ranging from research talks to hands-on workshops. Special program highlights included having our first cohort of learners in the Land of the Sky 101 Learning Circle (a book club series that will continue with another cycle in 2024—sign up here!), welcoming visitors to events as part of artist Miles Lamberson’s exhibition about zines in WNC, and offering programs to educate and empower people to better care for their own physical and digital archives.
We had 1,500 visitors to the reading room and we answered 2,076 reference questions via email, phone, or in-person research. Patrons were especially interested in researching the histories of homes/buildings, genealogy, local folklore, and Black history in WNC—plus lots of interesting queries about secret tunnels! (Spoiler: we’ve found no historic evidence to suggest that a vast network of secret tunnels below Asheville exists.)
BCSC staff also help patrons request and receive high-resolution copies of images from our collection, for purposes ranging from personal use to publication. In 2023 BCSC staff completed 66 image requests, sending a total of 655 high-resolution images to researchers. Of the 65 requests, 52 were for images to be used in publication, 14 were for personal use, and 22 local organizations or community projects were supported through the use of our images.
Patrons from around the world use BCSC’s digital resources in the reading room and from home, too. Researchers performed 56,545 searches using BCSC’s ArchivEra database, with “George Masa” leading as the most-searched terms, followed by location-specific keywords “Beaverdam,” “Montford,” “Biltmore,” and “Pack Square.”
Our website, specialcollections.buncombecounty.org, was viewed 45,059 times by 22,545 unique visitors. Many of these were visitors to our blog, HeardTell. You enjoyed hearing from us on social media, too: as of this writing, our follower count is 2,452 on Instagram (@avlhistory) and 1,991 on Facebook (@BuncombeCountySpecialCollections).
We are always grateful when researchers share the ways that information and images from our collection have contributed to their work. Our patrons completed several notable publications and projects in 2023, as well as many that will be forthcoming in 2024. A few highlights that you can check out now are:
- Danny Bernstein, Carolina Mountain Club: One Hundred Years, published March 22, 2023
- “Lillian Exum Clement” episode of My Home, NC, PBSNC, aired April 18, 2023
- Bruce E. Johnson, Biltmore Industries & Tryon Toy-Makers, published July 2023
- Cielo Maranchello, UNCA undergraduate thesis, “CLOSER: Building an Intersectional Queer Community in Asheville in the 1990s,” completed September 2023 (also, recipient of award for best thesis in NC history for their cohort)
- Andie Fox, UNCA undergraduate research, “Environmental Justice in Southern Appalachia and the Greater American South,” zine published September 2023
- Permanent exhibits at the Asheville Museum of History, opened October 25, 2023
- Bridget Booher, “George Masa’s Peak Dedication,” Our State, published September 25, 2023
- Julie J. Thomson and Michael Beggs, Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students, published November 2023
- Angelyn Whitmeyer, George Masa Photograph Database, published November 2023
- “Connections in the Making” exhibition at the Center for Craft, on view November 2023-October 2026
- The Asheville Black Cultural Heritage Trail, unveiled December 15, 2023
- North Carolina Moonshine and Motorsports Trail, NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, 8 locations recognized in 2023 and traveling exhibit to come
- Rhiannon Giddens’s American Railroad: A Musical Journey of Reclamation, Silkroad, touring 2023-2024
Last but not least of our research support, we are deeply proud of the work we are doing to help answer research questions from the Community Reparations Commission. We are profoundly grateful for the trust placed in us to bring the facts of African American injustice and resilience to light, and believe that this research will provide a powerful foundation for building a more equitable future.
If BCSC resources and services have helped you this year, we want to hear about it! Please comment to let us know what you’ve been up to.
What’s new in our collections?
BCSC received 47 new donations in 2023 that included collections of photographs, maps, books, personal papers, architectural drawings, and materials from local government organizations. Many of these materials spotlighted diverse communities that are often underserved in archives and special collections. Also included in these donations are signs and photographs from demonstrations that reflect current political and social issues.
BCSC staff processed new collections, added to existing collections, updated catalog descriptions, rehoused fragile items, and digitized new material to make it easier for our researchers to discover and use the resources we preserve. Here are a few highlights:
Reference collection
The first thing you see when you visit us is probably the books on our shelves! This year, we added more than 320 new titles to our reference collection to provide patrons with essential reference material and with resources that adequately represent diverse and historically underrepresented groups. Patrons can’t check these out, but we track how often books get used by researchers in the reading room. This year, that included 731 individual titles.
The top five monographs “circulated” by use in the reading room in 2023 were:
- A History of Buncombe County by Foster A. Sondley
- Pack(ed) Place: Cultural Heritage Tourism in Buncombe County, NC Past, Present, and Future by Katherine Calhoun Cutshall
- Historic Architectural Resources of Downtown Asheville, North Carolina by the NC Department of Cultural Resources
- Asheville City Plan by John Nolen
- Asheville’s Historic Montford District by the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County
Among serial titles, weekly newsletters (This Week in the Land of the Sky and This Week of Western North Carolina), education reports (the Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina), Eastern Cherokee census records, and Buncombe County court records topped the list.
Family collections
For our archives, we received a final donation of materials for the Mary Mitchell Westall Large Collection on Westall Family History (MS294), a wonderful collection containing hundreds of family letters, a recipe book/cookbook that belonged to Emma Chedester Wiley which was passed down to Mary Mitchell Wiley (Mrs. Jack Westall) and then to Mary M. Westall Large, scrapbooks and photo albums from the Arthur Luther Wiley family, additional printed materials relating to the Westall and Wiley families correspondence to Thomas Wolfe, and more.
BCSC is also now the official home of the Gary Logan Family Collection (MS242) documenting the descendant families of Felix (1794-1870) and Cynthia Bagwell (1794-1858) Logan, particularly from the lineage of William Erwin Logan (1860-1916) and Rose Addie Deaver (1865-1943). In addition to genealogical value, it provides early coverage of West Asheville community development and businesses.
Digital collections
To improve digital access, we contributed digitized resources to Newspapers.com and DigitalNC to host hundreds of issues (over 700,000 pages) of local newspapers that were not yet digitally accessible including the Asheville Times, Asheville Gazette, and Community Connections (Asheville’s first newspaper connecting WNC LGBTQ+ communities). We also continued to add items to the BCSC collection on Internet Archive, including oral histories, other audiovisual content, and nearly half of all historic Asheville City Council minutes, dating back to 1849.
We added hundreds of new images to our online archives, including the entire Bele Chere Poster Collection (MS443), offering a nostalgic throwback to the 35-year festival.
LGBTQ+ collections
In addition to working towards public digital access to Community Connections, BCSC worked with a number of researchers and donors with connections to Asheville’s LGBTQ+ history, including the WNC LGBTQIA+ Archives. These efforts gave us the opportunity to review, reorganize, and add to collections containing records of many LGBTQ-serving organizations including the Southern Appalachian Lesbian and Gay Alliance (SALGA), Community Liaison Organization for Support, Education and Reform (CLOSER), People of Faith for Just Relationships (PFJR), Asheville Gay Men’s Chorus, and the WNC AIDS Project (WNCAP)/Needle Exchange Program of Asheville (NEPA). Visit the reading room and ask for MS280, MS281, MS323, or MS370 to explore these fascinating collections.
Web archiving
Recognizing that many of the materials traditionally collected by archives are increasingly born-digital and published to the web, we began a web archive collection, preserving past version of websites for local governments, local newspapers, nonprofit organizations, and community life, allowing the public to view and analyze the sites and their changes over time. (Do you have a website to nominate? Let us know!)
Zines
Resident artist Miles Lamberson served as the second fellow in our Carolina Record Shop program, which we originally launched in 2021. In addition to curating an exhibition, presenting a research talk, and giving a workshop on zines, Lamberson’s efforts led to the creation of a new collection containing new donations from dozens of community creators and organizations active in Asheville’s DIY scene as well as the archives of the Asheville Zine Fest and its founder, Jessica White.
Institutional collections
Did you know that Buncombe County Public Libraries’ history lives at BCSC? The Asheville-Buncombe Library Collection (MS080) contains more than 50 boxes of historic material about our public library system, including branch libraries.
In 2023 we added 26 scrapbooks about library events from 1879-2000 at all branches, plus newly acquired materials documenting the Together We Read program to this collection. The collection as a whole contains invaluable historical information about the library and its relationship with the community. We also started a collection of COVID photos from the BC Library branches documenting the lockdown times and the resourcefulness of staff to get books to patrons during that trying time.
Community collections
In addition to the collections that we steward in our own space, BCSC helps local community organizations and individuals preserve their collections, too. The history of our community is too rich for any one repository alone—we aim to be part of a robust, sustainable ecosystem of individuals and organizations with the education and resources to contribute to Buncombe County’s collective memory.
This year we continued to work in partnership with the YMI Cultural Center to store, appraise, and arrange archives that will return to the YMI following their renovation. In the fall, BCSC staff attended the Festival of Neighborhoods and two neighborhood reunions to provide assistance with collecting neighborhood history. At the Black Montford and Stumptown event, staff scanned images brought in by participants. At the Southside United Neighborhood Association reunion, BCSC staff helped support student historians in collecting oral history interviews with event participants and supported SUNA behind the scenes with archiving images of previous community events found in the Grant Center in Fall 2023.
Within the Buncombe County Public Library system, library card holders are continuing to check out oral history backpacks to record stories from family members, neighbors, elders, and friends. Community archives projects in branch libraries also continued in 2023, including projects at the West Asheville Library (West Asheville History Project), Fairview Library (Fairview Community History Project), and Weaverville Library.
Thank you!
From visiting us for a collections tour, to allowing us to visit your space, to partnering with us on programs, our friends and partners are almost too many to list—but we’ll try!
Thank you to the 828 Digital Archives for Historical Equity. ArtsAVL Community Artist grantees, Asheville Museum of History, Asheville Radio Museum, Black Montford & Stumptown, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Black Mountain Library, Blue Ridge Community College, Blue Ridge Pride, Blue Ridge Public Radio, Bonesteel Films, Buncombe County Communications and Public Engagement (CAPE), Buncombe County Register of Deeds, Carolina Mountain Club, City of Asheville, Community Reparations Council, Community Webs, East Asheville Library, Enka-Candler Library, Fairview Library, First Presbyterian Church, Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections, Leadership Asheville, Leicester Public Library, Mountain Gateway Museum, NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources/Western Regional Archives, NC Digital Heritage Center, One Life, One Legacy Films, Pack Memorial Library Youth Services, Racial Justice Coalition, Society of Appalachian Historians, Southside United Neighborhood Association, Trust Fund for Buncombe County Public Libraries, UNC Asheville, WNC LGBTQIA+ Archives, Weaverville Library, West Asheville Business Association, West Asheville Library, and the YMI Cultural Center.
We couldn’t do it without you—our patrons, partners, and colleagues. Whatever your involvement with BCSC this year, we hope to see you even more next year!
From the bottom of our hearts,
Kathy, Catherine, Jenny, Kat, and Carissa
Y’all are the gosh-darned coolest! I am so amazed at the incredible things you do. Good work and THANK YOU!
Aww. Thanks so much, Julia!
Great upbeat, informative newsletter!
Wow! I had no idea how far-ranging our collections were. Thank you for all your great work!
Y’all continue to be one of the very best things about living in Asheville/ Buncombe County – making our heritage accessible and inclusive, so that everyone can take part. I can’t wait to see what you have in store for 2024. Thank you
Thanks so much for your kind words, Susan!