Joyner Library online exhibit honored
(Oct. 20, 2004) — East Carolina University’s Music Library won two awards for a digital exhibit titled Alice Person: Good Medicine and Good Music. The exhibit presents the life of Person, a 19th century folk musician, patent medicine entrepreneur and women’s rights advocate. The colorful musician’s life is presented online through her sheet music arrangements of traditional folk tunes, linked audio files, an autobiography, newspaper clippings and journal articles.The North Carolina Society of Historians, founded in 1941 to celebrate North Carolina history, presented the exhibit with both the Paul Green Multimedia Award and the Paul Jehu Barringer Award. The Green award recognizes those who promote state history through creative and artistic methods. The Barringer award this year was given to only two of nearly 800 entries.
Judges described the Alice Person exhibit “one of the finest digital exhibits we have ever had the pleasure of judging. It is a magnificent achievement that has already had a profound effect on North Carolina history.” The judges also recognized the “refreshing” research done by David Hursh, the Principal Investigator for the project, as well as the staff who assembled the research into a “proficient and inspiring” Website.
Hursh, Head of the Music Library, said “Alice’s arrangements incorporate both popular and rare southern tunes, and they provide important links to traditional European and American folk melodies. While the exhibit contributes to the study of ethnomusicology, it can also be enjoyed by the layman who is interested in the history and culture of this region.” Each digitized page of sheet music includes an audio link to that piece as interpreted by Dr. Charles Bath, Chair of the Keyboard Department at the ECU School of Music.
“The exhibit tells about an important episode in North Carolina history,” said North Carolina Librarian, Maury York. “It documents the creativity and hard work of a woman in the South who was forced to assume a role different than what was usual for her time and place.”
The Music Library is a part of Joyner Library at East Carolina University. It is the largest music library in eastern North Carolina with about 75,000 books, scores, periodicals, and media materials representative of all types and periods of music. The Alice Person Exhibit is produced and maintained by Digital Services at Joyner Library. Visit the Alice Person digital exhibit and other local history exhibits at http://www.lib.ecu.edu/digital/.