Women's Studies Section

Association of College & Research Libraries / American Library Association

OTHER
Spoken Word Recordings

Description

Documenting the American South (DAS) is a collection of primary source materials on Southern history, literature, and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. The collection is based primarily on holdings in libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is organized into ten thematic collections:

• The First Century of the First State University - documents the creation and growth of the University of North Carolina during the period 1776-1875.



• First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 - the majority of these narratives give voice to traditionally underrepresented groups: women, African-Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans.



• North American Slave Narratives - narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form as well as biographies of former slaves.



• The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865 - all aspects of Southern life during the Civil War are represented in this collection of literature, diaries, books, pamphlets, textbooks, government documents, images of maps, broadsides, currency, photographs, and more



• The Church in the Southern Black Community - focuses, through slave narratives and observations of other African American authors, on how the the black community adopted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.



• The North Carolina Experience - materials relating to the social, cultural, economic, political, and religious history of the state



• Library of Southern Literature - a wide range of literary works published before 1924



• North Carolinians and the Great War - materials demonstrate how World War I transformed the lives of North Carolians and created a lasting impression on the economics, public, and social policies of the state.



• Oral Histories of the American South - this collection is in early development but will focus on specifc localities, civil rights, southern politics, and southern women.



• True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina (1795-1868) - personal accounts of how antebellum students lived and worked.

Each thematic area includes an introduction which summarizes scope and content for that collection.

Women's Studies Content

Women are well represented in Documenting the American South. Highlights are found in:

• The Church in the Southern Black Community
• Slave narratives and observations by other African American writers cover issues of women’s participation in the church, women's contributions through missionary societies, civic work and advocacy, and women’s writings in religious periodicals.


• First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920
• Women's narratives cover a wide range of experiences/perspectives brought about by the timultuous changes in North Carolina culture, economics, politics, and society during this time period.


• The North Carolina Experience
• Resources for education, marriage and gender roles, suffrage, African American women, women’s clubs, and activism


• North American Slave Narratives
• Women are well represented in these narratives of fugitive and former slaves


• The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
• Diaries and personal correspondence reflect what life at home was like during the Civil War, particularly increasing work loads and responsibilities for women


• Oral Histories of the American South
• Audio files and transcripts of interviews with women, many of whom were political or professional trailblazers

Searching

The database uses the Google search engine for searching the collections simultaneously, and there is the option to search several individual collections. Each collection offers various browsing capabilities, and browsing of the author, title, and subject indices is available for the database as a whole.

Truncation	yes (automatic)
Boolean	yes (AND, NOT, OR)
Phrase Searching	yes (" ")
Help Screens/Quality	no
Controlled Vocabulary	yes (Library of Congress Subject Headings)
Keywords in Context	within results list, not within document

Archive Review:
Marcia Barrett
The University of Alabama