Appalachian Reading Room and Archives

Hours: Reading Room, Monday-Friday, 10:00-4 PM, Archives, Monday-Friday, 1:00-4:00 PM

Location: main floor of Renfro Library, in the Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies

Contact: Karen Paar (828) 689-1262 or Peggy Harmon, (828) 689-1394 in advance if assistance is needed
               Brochure Available Here (PDF)

Mars Hill Junior College students, circa 1910, Appalachian Archives, Liston B. Ramsey Center for Regional Studies, Mars Hill College

The Appalachian Reading Room, housing books and other resources related to the southern mountain region, represents the library's major special collections. The room provides non-circulating information and materials for student and faculty use, maintains sources for local history research, and offers periodic displays of regional arts and crafts.
A state of the art microfilm reader/scanner/printer has been added to the Appalachian Reading Room and is available for use. Please make an appointment to ensure availability.

Notable among the manuscripts collection held in the Appalachian Room is the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Folk Music Collection, which includes scrapbooks, pictures, sound recordings, and other memorabilia; the James G. K. McClure Collection, which includes over 5,000 photographs documenting western North Carolina agriculture in the 1920s to the early 1950s, and a vast array of materials from the Farmers Federation and the Lord's Acre Initiatives, including recordings of several Farmers Federation Picnics; a variety of collections featuring western North Carolina mountain musicians--- the Byard Ray Festival Collection, the Jackie Ward Collection featuring selected materials from the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival and Shindig on the Green, the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Minstrel of Appalachia Festival Collection, the Madison County Heritage Festival Ballad and Story Swap Collection, the Obray Ramsey Memory Collection, The Tommy Hunter Memory Collection, and the Dellie Norton Collection.

Other special collections include the Southern Appalachian Photographic Archives, the I-26 Collection of aerial photographs, maps, and documents concerning the construction of the Madison County portion of I-26, the Evelyn Underwood Collection of important Madison County early documents, photographs, and oral histories, the Gertrude M. Ruskin Collection of Cherokee Indian artifacts and materials, the Long Collection of Baptist records including associational minutes and church histories, and the college archives including papers relating to the history of Mars Hill College.

(In addition to the non-circulating special collections, other Appalachian-related materials can be accessed through the Renfro Library catalog and are available for circulation.)