NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 25 number 1 - Fall 2004

NCSU Libraries Awarded Major Textiles Microfilming Grant

By Scott Devine, Preservation

The NCSU Libraries, working in partnership with the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) and fifteen other libraries throughout the Southeast, has received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to preserve collections from NC State's Burlington Textiles Library. This two-year project, begun in July 2004, will preserve a broad range of materials that document the history and culture of the American South. The Libraries' share of the grant, "Industrialization of the Textiles Industry in the New South," will provide approximately $40,000 in microfilming services that will preserve the content of 288 brittle volumes published between 1820 and 1945. Publications chosen for the project include early technical handbooks as well as material documenting the effects of industrialization on the economy and culture of southern communities.

After the Civil War, textiles became one of the most important industries in the South. By 1850 there were already more than 200 textile mills in the South. Expansion after the war created a southern textiles industry with a production volume that rivaled New England's. Because of the employment opportunities that came with the textiles industry, textile mill towns quickly emerged as centers for working and living in the South. In this way, the textiles industry had a profound impact not only on the rate of urbanization in the region, but also on the developing cultural and socioeconomic life that would help to shape the modern South.

The textiles program that later became the College of Textiles opened at NC State in 1899. The nature of its teaching and research programs was applied and practical. As the textiles industry expanded and flourished in the region, the need for a program to train mechanical engineers to run textile mills grew. NC State, formerly named the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, became the home for this program.

The Burlington Textiles Library opened in 1945 and consisted of 1,000 books and periodicals collected during the early years of the college. Many of the older items in the library's collection are handbooks and training guides published in Europe and New England. These books, used as teaching and research aids, were critical to the process of educating southern textile engineers. Today, the Burlington Textiles Library includes approximately 50,000 volumes and over 200 periodical subscriptions.

Materials selected for preservation microfilming include a variety of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century technical manuals and handbooks. Pocket-sized guides explaining how to set calculations properly for looms and other machinery, as well as guides to early textile industry standards are good examples of the kind of material that will be filmed. Practical handbooks for repairing machinery are also included. Many of these handbooks are small and show signs of having been carried in a textile worker's pocket, the well-thumbed pages creased and marked with machine oil and other signs of regular use. More elaborate items, such as fabric and wool sample books and instructions for pattern designs, are also included in the material to be microfilmed.

The development of the textiles industry had a powerful impact on southern communities and on the people who found themselves moving from an agrarian-based culture to the more complex industrial world of textile machines and mills. When NCSU established the College of Textiles, it recognized the need to recruit and train local experts in all aspects of the textiles industry. The Burlington Textiles Library is one of fewer than five libraries in the nation focusing on textiles. Through the years, the library has collected and maintained a wide range of items used to educate and prepare students for careers in the textiles industry. Preserving these items will enable NC State to continue its mission of educating students and professionals for an innovative future in textiles.