We’re rummaging through the university archives, and you get to watch!

1958 image of Central Campus: quadrangle approximately bounded by library, Polk Hall, Scott Hall, and Gardner

1958 image of Central Campus: quadrangle approximately bounded by library, Polk Hall, Scott Hall, and Gardner

Haven’t you always wanted to root around in the university’s basement to see what interesting old stuff is stored away down there? The Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), which houses the University Archives, does just that on three fascinating, livestreamed events this fall semester.

These SCRC “unboxings” are livestreamed on the Libraries’ new YouTube channel. Please follow and subscribe to get notifications of our upcoming events and to access recordings of previous ones. These events are free and open to the public.

The fall 2022 unboxings schedule is as follows:

Post-World War II Campus Maps
Thursday, Sept. 29, 3:00 p.m.

Architecture professor Burak Erdim joins us to explore postwar maps of the NC State campus, including some of the early master plans of the university during a time of major growth and change. University Archivist Todd Kosmerick has also found some fascinating records of an African American residential community that was displaced.

Halloween Spooky Spectacular
Thursday, Oct. 20, 3:00 p.m.

We excavate some of the spookier and more supernaturally inclined materials in our collection, including a 16th-century text by French jurist Jean Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers (Of the Demon-mania of the Sorcerers) from 1580. One scholar has described the text this way: "Presented as a witch-hunting manual, it identifies and describes the typical witch, the associated crimes, the subsequent legal procedures required for the prosecution of witchcraft and the punishments appropriate for the witches’ crimes."

Dyeing Textiles
Thursday, Nov. 17, 3:00 p.m.

We will test some recipes for dyeing textiles in Rob Dunn's public science labs on campus using recipes found in our collections. See how these dyeing experiments went, and peruse collection materials that reflect different approaches to dyeing textiles, including some recipes that use plants you might have in your garden and ingredients you might find in your kitchen.