NCSU Librarians “Flash Mob” Raleigh’s Oldest House

Contact: dwhiscoe , NCSU Libraries, (919) 513-3425

The Joel Lane House Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, is a carefully preserved testament to the man who was instrumental in creating much of the early history of this now-flourishing region of the country. But until recently, a key part of that history was lost to most of us. On March 23, a group of volunteers from the North Carolina State University Libraries descended on the oldest house in Raleigh, and, in a decidedly non-traditional manner, “flash mobbed” the 232 books that the Museum has collected but has never been able to make widely available in a systematic way to historians and to members of the community who are interested in the history of the colonial period.

Colonel Joel Lane is often referred to as the “father” of both Wake County and the City of Raleigh. He introduced the bill that established the county in 1770; in 1772 he was instrumental in establishing the capitol in Raleigh, which now sits on a parcel of his former land. He helped shape the early history of the country as a delegate to the North Carolina revolutionary Provincial Congress, delegate to the 1789 NC Constitutional Convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution, and member of the first Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina. And his manor was deemed “The Best House in 100 Miles” during the period.

The Joel Lane House Museum provides a faithfully-restored experience of the time, with tours led by costumed docents and a “Hands on History” program for school groups. But the significant library held by Museum had never been properly catalogued until Erin Stalberg, head of the NCSU Libraries Metadata and Cataloging Department, was inspired by “flash-mob” cataloging events that community-spirited librarians are beginning to hold throughout the US. Flash mobs became trendy in the early part of this decade as texting, viral emails, and other social media allowed large groups of people to convene, quickly accomplish some often-quirky task, and then disperse. The website LibraryThing.com has embodied the spirit of the time to provide librarians with the online infrastructure to bring their specialized skills quickly to bear on projects like the Joel Lane cataloguing.

Belle Long, the Museum’s curator, introduced the volunteers to the Joel Lane collection of books on museum maintenance, antiques, colonial Americana, and the history of North Carolina and Raleigh. The collection included a significant number of rare books and documents, including historical society newsletters and pamphlets and the original Lane family Bible.

Upholding a long tradition of volunteering their world-class expertise, the NC State University Librarians jumped in for the afternoon with the enthusiasm, know-how, donated LibraryThing software, and home-made pizza to give the Joel Lane House collection its first professional library make over. The favorite touch of librarian humor came late in the afternoon as a book entitled "Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South" was mischievously tagged “dueling” in the metadata that makes the collection easily searchable online.

“The NSCU Libraries are proud to be known as a technology incubator for our students and faculty on our campus, but I’m especially proud that our employees also enthusiastically volunteer their time and expertise out in the community that supports us,” said Susan Nutter, Vice Provost and Director of the North Carolina State University Libraries.

In addition to Erin Stalberg, the NCSU Libraries volunteers included Laura Abraham, Cathy Dorin-Black, Shirley Hamlett, Rob Loomis, Sara Newell, Charley Pennell, Keisha Poole, Jacquie Samples, Barbara Weinberg, Wes Woody, Jamie Bradway, and Mary Chimato. The LibraryThing organization provided the Joel Lane House and all of the cataloging volunteers with gifts of lifetime accounts, as well as free T-shirts, scanners, and laptop stickers.

A brief video of the Joel Lane House Museum flash mob can be found at on NC State’s YouTube Channel .