Tennessee Stuff 2009

[Robbi De Peri]

There are a number of digital resources that showcase the historical and current highlights of the great state of Tennessee. Share below in our Week 4 forum about your experience(s) using the featured site.

Also please welcome this week's resident experts: Sue Maszaros, TN State Library and Archives; Tiffani R Conner, Lincoln Memorial University; and Genny Carter, Tennessee State Library and Archives.

[Wendy Cornelisen]

What a great picture of Graceland!

[Mona Batchelor]

Thanks Robbi! Looks as if we have some of the best minds in the business on this task!

[Becky Smeltzer]

I've used TEL for many searches and appreciate access to this database. I've also used the postcard collection on TeVA. I had heard about Volunteer Voices, but had not done any searches in this collection. Wonderful resource!

[Christi U.]

My workplace, The Center for Popular Music, contributed a good portion which addressed sheet music about the Monkey Scopes trial in TN. I'm a proud girl.

[Genny]

The Volunteer Voices collection is a wonderful resource, Becky! It was a unique statewide collaborative project - and I hope that it will be supplemented in the future with additional resources. I had the interesting task of being the "Digitization and Content Specialist" for Middle Tennessee - and traveled to about 20 counties to scan historical treasures from archives, libraries and a few museums. We didn't have *nearly* enough time to get to all the fascinating places that we wanted to, and so there are hidden gems still out there waiting to be digitized, cataloged and shared with the world in a digital collection!

[Mona Batchelor]

What an amazing opportunity to be a part of creating Volunteer Voices, Genny! It is another of Tennessee's many valuable resources. Perhaps through Learn & Discover we can encourage Tennessee teachers to incorporate those digital "gems" into creating new and exciting learning experiences!

[Donna Reagan]

Yes! Loved this as well. Thanks for sharing your activitiy with us. What a great service you've done!

[Genny]

While you're looking about in TeVA - check out the Hardy A. Mitchener, Jr. Journal. Recently, some of his descendants found the journal online by Googling his name and finding the collection on TeVA: Descendants find diary of WWII POW. Neat stuff! NPT came out and filmed a piece for Tennessee Crossroads - so keep an eye out for that.

So many of the collections in TeVA are fascinating - I mean that.
Take a look through William Henry Fort's scrapbook from Fisk University...

or the Rose Music Collection (I scanned some of those for Volunteer Voices, others were added by TSLA folks)...

The Scopes Monkey Trial collection complements the sheet music about the Scopes Trial that's in Volunteer Voices - contributed by the Center for Popular Music as MTSU.

Tennessee Postcards - some interesting, occasionally quirky, views of Tennessee's past via postcards.

Photographs - TSLA has some amazing photos... the Dept. of Conservation collection sounds like an odd place to find "arts, crafts and folklife" but take a look. And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This also complements some of the great stuff we found for Vol Voices.

The Early Tennessee Schoolhouses is a collection that shows us how much things have changed in the past century. After looking at that, click over to Volunteer Voices - and search with the keyword 'Pikeville.' I scanned photographs from a Rosenwald school for boys in Pikeville; you won't forget the latrine image. Another interesting contrast is the Mary Florence Betts Scrapbook from Stewart County, with 35 images in Vol Voices. The public library has this amazing scrapbook from one of their previous teachers/school superintendents. She went around the county and photographed all the one and two-roomed schools, both "white" and "colored" schools, from 1938-1942. Sometimes, it's just the building, but often she has the students and teachers posed by the school. Some of these schools were on land that is now part of Fort Campbell, and inaccessible to most of us.
See the Teachers and students of Walnut Grove School, Stewart County, Tenne... for example

Pick a Tennessee or historical theme . . . and see what you find in both collections.

While you're in Volunteer Voices, scan by topic or era. We selected 25 common topics that people commonly searched. The collection is also cataloged by historical eras used in the state K-12 social studies curriculum. Up at the top of the home page, you'll see a link for educators that has lesson plans and thematic units designed by teachers. I'd write more on Volunteer Voices now, but I do need to return to my regularly-scheduled job. :)

What do you find that fascinates you? Have you checked out "Colonel Tennessee" yet? I loved working with the Carrie Chapman Catt collection which has those old political cartoons amongst its assortment of women's suffrage items....

[Christi U.]

And this is why Genny is one of our fabulous Specialists this week. Thanks for the exciting tips. I think I'm going to send my mom the link to the schoolhouses. She was a teacher for .... years and will probably love the collection.

[Genny]

I think your mom - and other former teachers like me - will love seeing those collections with the one room and Rosenwald schools. Anyone who attended schools like them would be interested... heck, anyone interested in education, history, how far we've come... etc. ;)

and Christi, those are really just the tip of the iceberg! Once folks play around with Volunteer Voices and TeVA, there are dozens of other collections online by other Tennessee institutions. Most colleges and universities have collections online - I'm most familiar with UTK's, but I've seen links to many others. Many museums and libraries also have great online collections.

So much to explore!! And I would have LOVED this stuff back when I was teaching history!

[Christi U.]

Speaking of Southern digital projects, have you seen the Digital Library of Appalachia? Julie Adams of TN Wesleyan College guided me there. It's amazing.

[Tressy Hart]

Sometimes I think we forget to use the first resource we think of or we get bored with it and want to get something more specialized. The website for the state is a great resource with all sorts of stuff to be found - http://www.tennesseeanytime.org/about/learn.html .