Penn School Pathfinder Now Available on the Web

An aspect of the "Virtual BDC" that gets overlooked too often is the "Local History Treasures Brought to You by the Beaufort District Collection" section found on the Library's Recommended Reading Page. While most of the links are to librarian created guides to materials on topics such as African American Fiction Writers, Mystery Writers or Staff Picks, gradually I've been adapting some paper-based bibliographies once available either in-house or by e-mail request to web format so people have access to the lists 24/7/365.

In honor of Black History Month, I recently posted a pathfinder to library and web resources about Penn School. Penn School was founded by missionaries Laura Towne and Ellen Murray. While it isn't everything we have about Penn School and Penn Center, I think that you'll find it to be a rather extensive list of materials.

Penn School was one of the very first schools for the newly freed slaves. Although the school closed in 1948, Penn transformed itself into Penn Community Services Center and in the 1980s, became Penn Center. The grounds, buildings, and York W. Bailey Museum are on the National Register and are open to visitors.

PS: I made an executive decision to post the pathfinder in its imperfect formatted state. (How I wish I could break the code of the knol to resolve the inconsistent formatting! When I cut and paste from WORD, it looks just right. When I test the format, it looks just right. When I hit the "publish" button, though, something goes cattywampus and the format becomes inconsistent. Therefore, I apologize in advance to any proofreaders out there reading this. Rest assured, if I could figure out what makes the document go cattywampus upon publication, I would have fixed it before you got the chance to see the cattywampusness! However, I think it's more important to share information and help others than it is to insist that every letter, space, and font be consistent. If you come into the BDC and ask for a paper copy, I assure you that one is perfectly formatted. It's a frustration. Sigh.)