Special Collections and rare book rooms offer accessible treasures

I’ve done a little writing and job-related traveling the last couple of weeks and wanted to share how some of the things I’ve been able to see and use are accessible to the public. Some of these places offer great research possibilities and others — well are just fun things to see.

I was fortunate to travel to the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of South Carolina in Columbia with some colleagues from Barton College. This is one of the best rare book book rooms in the country.

The library staff was incredibly gracious and spent some time giving us a tour of some of the highlights. Among the highlights were F. Scott Fitzgerald’s briefcase and a flask given to him by his wife Zelda. One of the librarians told us that Scott took it as a sign that Zelda wanted to marry him, but that Zelda just considered it a gift and not much more.

Maybe the most interesting item was a ledger that Scott kept. In it, he recorded all of his stories and works and where he had sold them and for how much. When he felt like he’d gotten all he could financially from a piece, he labeled it “permanently buried.” It was also noted that Fitzgerald put the return address of his personal items of his publisher, not his home.

There was a first edition of The Great Gatsby valued at several hundred thousand dollars and a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls autographed by Ernest Hemingway to Scott. Fitzgerald received his copy a short time before his death.

The collection also included a huge collection of comics. We were shown cuneiform receipts that were among the earliest forms of writing — one was a receipt for beer and the other for livestock. There were Hebrew scrolls, a 1493 Bible and a 15th century witch-hunting manual.

One of the librarians had also found a letter from the early 19th century that had a connection to a book project I’m working on. I would never have found it without his guidance. While I’ve always enjoyed and appreciated librarians, research has surely made me think that digitizing is great, but we should realize that human aspect of libraries is irreplaceable.

What added to the interest was that the week before, I was a writer-in-residence at the Weymouth Center for the Humanities in Southern Pines, North Carolina. This place was the former home of James Boyd, a well known and best selling author in the early 20th century. Boyd often hosted his friends Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and O. Max Perkins. The Center also hosts the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

The Center is open for tours and offers many events throughout the year. A group of volunteers takes care of the English style gardens, and many local residents walk the paths and trails of the grounds and Weymouth Woods, which is a state park.

All of these resources are open and available to the public. And there are plenty of other places with wonderful items closer to home.

For example, Barton College has special collections and a growing rare book on the second floor of Hackney Library. East Carolina University has a tremendous special collection and much of it is listed online. Among the highlights is the Stuart Wright Collection, which was being catalogued when I was a graduate student there.

I made a couple of trips to the UNC Special Collections and the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I found the papers of Captain John Thorp(e) of Rocky Mount and Congressman A.H. Arrington, both of whom were featured in Galvanized. Braswell Library in Rocky Mount and the Wilson County Public Library also have genealogy/research rooms which contain so many jewels it would require another blog post to cover. Among the things I’ve found helpful over the years were a Civil War diary, a book about a prison camp that is extremely had to find, family histories, complete collections of old magazines and newsletters and city directories from the early 20th century. And all of these things are available to be enjoyed for FREE.

Many people have asked me over the last year about how to find details about family members — the libraries in Wilson and Rocky Mount are just about the best place for locals to start. A nerd like me can spend hours here, but those with a more casual interest can likely enjoy more than a few surprises.