Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022 Results

Here's a re-cap of the titles I chose for the Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022. I must admit that the effort did result in me examining the contents of the BDC in ways I probably would not have had to do in the course of my daily work. And that can be a very good exercise for someone who has worked for so long in one collection. At times, the selection process took longer than anticipated but I have a greater appreciation for the scope of materials inside the Research Room. I hope that you do as well as a result of following along last year.  

January - The BDC has a number of memoirs from which to choose. Olivia wrote about one in her "My Favorite Things" post a few weeks ago.  

February - Establishing a "love connection" in the BDC was hard - and I had to do it again in October with a slightly different category. In the end I had to go "off books" and choose a different format inside the Research Room, i.e. a poster, the Last Romance poster to be precise. I selected a poster announcing the performance of the Last Romance play by a local theater company that was performed in 2019. BTW: Our local poster collection numbers almost 300 as of this writing.

The BDC is a little light on the ground when it comes to "Fantasy" and "Mystery" too. I featured my choices for March and April on the BDC's Facebook page. You can see what I wrote in the FB Re-Caps: 

 

March - Ballad of Witches Hill: Fiends Invade Frogmore by Jeanne Gosselin Arnold, illustrated by Monica Miller  [Look for the March 13 entry in the blogpost] and April  - Deceit, Disappearance and Death on Hilton Head Island by Charlie Ryan with Pamela Ovens [Look for the April 10 entry in the blogpost.] 

May -  Rehearsal for Reconstruction by Willie Lee Rose was a slam-dunk for the "History" category. What Professor Rose did with her book was ground-shifting and enduring -  which is outstanding given that the book was published in 1964, remains in print, and still holds the field today as the best book written thus far about the course of Reconstruction in Beaufort District, SC. [On a personal note, in my pantheon of history writers who inspired me to study history at a deeper lever were Willie Lee Rose, Barbara Tuchman and Bruce Catton. Did you notice that 2 of the 3 were women? That meant a lot to a young girl in the 1970s.] 

June - The BDC had only 3 selections: Dead Low Water by Roger Pinckney; Lowcountry Boil by Carl Smith; and Ten Days in Brazzaville by Scott Graber that qualified under the "Thriller" category. Given the circumstances, I highlighted each one.

July - There's not a lot of "Contemporary Fiction" in the Research Room. But short stories can be contemporary and most of the entries in the Short Story America series do happen to be contemporary in nature. It also didn't hurt that the editor Tom Johnston and the Short Story Press is located in Beaufort. 

August - My selection for the "Young Adult" category was another no-brainer.  Mr. & Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head was the obvious and most appropriate selection.  BTW: This book was on many a school's reading lists for more than a half century. Now that is no small feat - and for a native Beaufort District author, no less! 

September - I couldn't choose just one book for "Literary Fiction" because how can a person pick just one of the Literary Fiction Works of Pat Conroy to highlight. After all, Mr. Conroy wrote a lot of words - and most of those were written in a literary fiction style.  

October -  As mentioned above, love is hard to find in the Research Room. For the category, "Historical Romance" I choose Beaufort 1849 by Karen Lynn Allen. 

November - The "Non-Fiction" category was a shoo-in: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, 1514-2006 by Larry Rowland, Steve Wise and others (3 vols.) I could not do my job nearly as well as I manage to do without these volumes to guide me into right paths for documentation and further investigation. 

December - Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill One of my career regrets is that I had to pass on the BDC sponsoring author Lawrence Hill's visit to the Library system after this book came out. Beaufort Branch got the honors of hosting him. [The BDC doesn't "do" novels, remember?]  

I hope that you have - or will - read one or more of the recommendations. And of course, you can always set up an appointment to come visit the Research Room to see these and other items in the special collections and archives room of the Beaufort County Library: bdc@bcgov.net; 843-255-6468.

JSYK: I am not participating in any reading challenges in 2023. 2023 is the year of the finalizing the BDC's digital collections and getting as many finding aids written and posted as possible before my watch as the Beaufort District Collection's steward ends.  

Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022: Historical Fiction

Now I know that some people will naturally assume that I would pick Sea Island Lady by Francis Griswold for this month's Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022. Some say that A Sea Island Lady is the best book ever written about Beaufort's past. I do not happen to agree. I like Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill much better, probably because it was inspired by an historical document. 

Hill's multiple award winning book is rooted on a 1783 naval ledger kept by the British to account for the 3000 enslaved and free Black Loyalists who were transported into Canada at the end of the American Revolution. The original Book of Negroes ledger is 150 pages long and full of data and genealogical information about who the Black Loyalists transported to Canada were. "As a research tool it offers historians and genealogists the opportunity to trace and correlate people backward and forward in time with other documents, such as ship manifests, slave ledgers, and census and tax records." (1)

Hill's novel was published under two titles: In Canada as The Book of Negroes after the ledger and in the United States as Someone Knows My Name. It has become one of the all-time best-selling books in Canada.  (2) In it, Hill tells the life narrative story from the perspective and memories of an African child, Aminata, who was stolen at age 11 from her village. She is first enslaved on St. Helena Island indigo plantation. But her yearning to be free places her in conflict with her owners. She learns to read and write in secret in expectation that doing so will help her to get back to Africa. She becomes skilled as a midwife. Her literacy and personal knowledge of the transported Black Loyalists allows her to work on compiling the Book of Negroes in the novel.  Her tale covers six decades, 1745 to 1805, three continents, Africa, North American and Europe, and topics related to enslavement, abolitionism, and what it means to be a human being. I agree with Publishers Weekly that "Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force." (3)   

As the book cover indicates, it was adapted into a 6 part television miniseries entitled The Book of Negroes by Canadian Broadcasting Company and Black Entertainment Television in 2015.  

A few words to protect myself from being pilloried by others for not choosing the Griswold novel: 

A Sea Island Lady is one of those books one either loves or hates. Many local residents and visitors fall into the "Love" category. Personally, I have never liked it. The protagonist's mealy-mouthed support of her deadbeat alcoholic husband annoyed me so much that I quit reading the book about page 500. I also think - as did many of its contemporary reviewers in 1939 when the book was first published - that it was way too long for its own good. I lost interest and patience about half-way through the almost 1000 pages of text. This is not to say that I don't recommend that others read it. You may well enjoy the book and find it more to your reading taste. At the very least, the parts about the effect of the Great Sea Island Hurricane and phosphate mining bear obvious signs of Griswold's diligent historical research. However, I do recommend that one reads it in conjunction with Dr. Rowland and Dr. Wise's volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Beaufort County South Carolina to help separate the fiction from the facts.

Notes: 

(1) Hill, Lawrence. 2007. "Freedom Bound." Beaver 87 (1): 16-23.  https://search-ebscohost-com.scsl.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24097871&site=ehost-live.

(2) MacKay, Marlo, and Laurel Tarulli. 2015. "Dal Reads." Reference & User Services Quarterly 54(3): 16-18. doi:10.5860/rusq.54n3.16.

(3) "Someone Knows My Name." 2007. Publishers Weekly 254 (35): 39. https://search-ebscohost-com.scsl.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=110965591&site=ehost-live.  

Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Non-Fiction

The Research Room has a lot of titles which meet the "Non-Fiction" rubric for the November challenge. 

Non-fiction is defined by the Google dictionary based on those by Oxford Languages as "prose writing that is based on facts, real events, and real people, such as biography or history." There are shelves and shelves of non-fiction titles stored in the BDC stacks. In other words, there are way too many choices for me to highlight just one book - but I can share what is the most used set of books in the Research Room - because I use them on an almost daily basis: The History of Beaufort County South Carolina, a set of three volumes by Dr. Lawrence Sanders Rowland with co-authors Dr. Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Dr. George C. Rogers and Gerhard Spieler. 

In fact my personal copies of this work, along with Walter Edgar's South Carolina: A History at home, and my 20+ years of experience managing the BDC, allowed me to answer about 65% of the reference questions that came in during the COVID shutdown while working from home in Spring 2020. 

As I just wrote, the History of Beaufort County, South Carolina set consists of three volumes. 

Volume 1,  entitled The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, 1514 -1861, covers the period from the European  exploration to the start of the Civil War. Co-authors for volume 1 are Larry Rowland, Alexander Moore and George Rogers. It is also available as an e-book on Hoopla, the BCL's streaming service. 

Volume 2 has a wonderfully alliterative title, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861 - 1893 to cover the Civil War and Reconstruction periods as former ways of life are forever altered for former masters and enslaved. Co-authors for volume 2 are Larry Rowland, Stephen Wise, and Gerhard Spieler. 

The final volume, Bridging the Sea Islands' Past and Present, 1893- 2006, begins with the Great Sea Island Hurricane of 1893 and covers real estate development and military installations that lead to Beaufort County being one of the fastest growing counties in the United States by the late 20th century. Rowland and Wise were the co-authors of this volume. 

However, let's say that a a 3 volume history of the county that covers almost 500 years of written history is just a bit much for you to handle. If you prefer to focus your attention on a category of non-fiction I have a few more suggestions for you to consider. 

The 000s have bibliographies, general works, and items about South Carolina newspapers. I'd say that the most classic item on this particular shelf is the 6 volume Bibliography of South Carolina compiled by former Beaufort resident Robert J. Turnbull. In the days before computer databases, it took him years and years of work in libraries throughout the southeast to create this title of titles about the Palmetto State.  

The 100s cover philosophy and psychology related titles. The Research Room has only 6 titles stored in this particular Dewey Decimal classification. Of those, A Sermon upon Duelling delivered by the Rev. Arthur Wigfall of the Holy Trinity Church in Grahamville in 1856 is the most notable. He hated the practice of dueling. It is a rather rare item. 

(Looking ahead: We will be offering an in-person local history program about "Dueling in Beaufort District" with Neil Baxley at Bluffton Branch in May 2023. If you want to see the recording he made for us during the COVID restrictions period, view it on the Library's YouTube Channel.)

The 200s cover churches and spiritual matters. We have 4 shelves worth of local church histories and general reference works about denominations.  You can read more about the congregational histories we have in an earlier Connections article. Plus we have a virtual Author Book Talk about one of the titles housed in this section, The Means of Grace by Eric Plaag on the Library's YouTube Channel. 

We have 35 shelves worth of Social Sciences related materials in the 300s. We have a fairly large amount of items in this section because of Gullah related titles, Marines related titles, government documents, high school annuals and folklore. You can read more about the Legislative Manuals we have stored in this classification range in an earlier Connections article. This is also where the book Jackpot: High Times, High Seas and the Sting that Launched the War on Drugs by Jason Ryan is stored. He's coming to Beaufort Branch to talk about his book in May 2023. 

The 400s are mostly related to the Gullah language titles we hold. It has only a dozen items, including the seminal Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect by Lorenzo Dow Turner. 

I think of the 500s as the flora, fauna and hurricanes section. 

(You can view my "Tide of Death" presentation about the Great Sea Island Hurricane of 1893 on the Library's YouTube Channel to get the basic information about how the biggest, baddest storm to date in Beaufort District's long and storied history killed people and destroyed the economy for many years afterwards.) 

In the 600s one will find titles related to Technology or applied sciences such as medicine, folk medicine, agriculture, rice, cotton, indigo, shrimping, cookery, and timber. We have about 6 feet worth of cookbooks created by local organizations in this particular section. Beloved former BDC assistant Kristi Marshall updated the "Food for Thought and Thoughts on Food" article about cookbooks in the BDC in during the COVID shutdown of 2020. Perhaps you'll find something to your taste there. (Bad pun intended).  

(Looking ahead: We will host an Author Book Talk with Beverly Jennings about her Shrimp Tales in March 2023 at the St. Helena Branch Library and I will interview Capt. Woody Collins about his book Where Have All the Shrimp Boats Gone? in January 2024. Yes, I do plan local history programs 12- 18 months out). 

The 700s Dewey Decimal Classification covers artists, architecture, garden design, music, and sports. Featured here are works about and by Beaufort's own native sons Jonathan Greene and boxer "Smokin' Joe" Frazier.

We have 4 shelves full of items cataloged in the 800s as Literature. There are some general reference materials about people who create literary works, such as Literary South Carolina by Edwin C. Epps and the multi-volume Library of Southern Literature which once resided in the Beaufort Township Library. Most of the materials shelved here were produced by local poets. You can read more about the poetry books in an earlier article in Connections. 

The Research Room's 900s Dewey Decimal Classification section has twice as many shelves of material than is dedicated to any other classification. We have 74 shelves worth of geography, genealogy and history related materials. The three titles taking up the most space in the 900s are all related to the Civil War: The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, 128 volumes; Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 100 volumes and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, 13 volumes. Though there is still a considerable amount of shelf space left for my successors to fill, if push came to shove the OR for the Armies; and the OR for the Navies could be discarded to free up 30 linear feet of shelf space because there are stable digital library copies available at no charge posted online.  

Some libraries include biographies in the 900s but here in the Beaufort County Library we have a "B" section for biographies. I have almost 36 linear feet of biographical materials on 12 shelves. Among the local luminaries featured in this section are Robert Smalls, Pat Conroy, James Louis Petigru, legendary Beaufort County Sheriff Ed McTeer, and Teresa Bruce's book The Other Mother: A Rememoir about dancer Byrne Miller. 

Some of the titles housed in the Research Room are also available through the circulating Local History sections at the physical branch libraries. Everything circulating through the local history sections is supposed to have a permanent copy already in the Research Room. The largest local history section is currently at Beaufort Branch Library - mostly because it's a busy branch located in the historic downtown area where folks expect to find local history titles. Usually Bluffton Branch Library and Hilton Head Branch Library compete for 2nd place in the monthly statistics of local history titles after Beaufort Branch. The next time you're physically in one of our branch libraries, ask where the local history section is and explore the offerings. 

Once the Technical Services staff complete the inventory, I will be able to tell you precisely how many books and recordings we have in the non-fiction section.

The BDC's Facebook Posts for October 2022

Here's a recap of the social media posts I made last month of Facebook. The biggest news was that the BDC has its first fulltime assistant since May 2020 - definitely a movement in the right direction at long last! The BDC celebrated Archives Month, Archaeology Month, National Newspaper Week, and Halloween during October 2022. We hosted one local history program with our partner the Beaufort History Museum. JSYK: I edited a few posts for ease of reading and/or added links to additional information in the posts re-capped below.

October 16 - If you happen to stop by the research room anytime soon for an appointment, you may see a new face among the stacks! To give myself a quick introduction, hi! My name is Olivia Santos, and I’m Grace’s new assistant (or “victim,” as she likes to call me) in the BDC. I’m excited to meet you all when you come in for appointments, while we talk over the phone, or at an upcoming event.

The Materials Mondays posts in October all related to archival materials that we hold about the topic of the War of the Rebellion, which as you may already know is the official name of the American Civil War.

October 3 - "Materials Monday: 50 Shades of Beige" posts this month will highlight some of our Civil War related archival collections because October is Archives Month and the BHM/BCL 6.1 session opens with a session by Jackson Canaday about the history of a Civil War unit from Beaufort. (I love 2-fer deals, just in case you didn't already know that.) First up is the R. L. Johnson Medical Record Book, 1863 – 1864, 1867-1883, a primary source document offering insight into Civil War era treatment of wounds and maladies, Reconstruction era obstetrics, and cotton farming using freed labor. This journal is significant because Johnson’s depictions give a firsthand view of medical practices during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras when prescribing whiskey, eggs, and opium were standard treatments. The medical cases and farm accounts typically include the names of the individuals involved and thus may be useful for genealogical purposes. The direct link to the digital journal is bit.ly/2UKZxm3. The Finding Aid to this collection is in the BDCBCL blog.

October 10 - "50 Shades of Beige: Materials Monday" in Archives Month: Another Civil War archival collection that shows the evolving sentiment for secession, Confederate service of local men, and the consequences of the Civil War on a prominent Beaufort family is the Reeves Collection of Stuart Family Papers. Claudia Smith Stuart (Mrs. John Allan Stuart), sister of fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett, kept up an active correspondence with her children about family, local and national events. There's a Connections blog post https://bit.ly/3s2bK8R about letters in Folders 9 and 10. The Finding Aid https://bit.ly/3rKRRTy goes into much more detail about the scope of the collection and highlights significant items in each of the folders. Questions? Contact us: 843-255-6468 or bdc@bcgov.net

October 17 - "Materials Monday: 50 Shades of Beige": The Civil War archival collections include the L.A. Hall Civil War Stereoscope Collection that was donated by postmaster Leamonde Avery Hall to the Beaufort Township Library in 1944. The originals are in the Research Room but to minimize the wear and tear caused by physical handling of the 150+ years old images we digitized them for the Lowcountry Digital Library in 2018. The direct link to the digital collection is http://bit.ly/2B8qacS. The image is of Captain Low and his family in 1865.

October 24 - "Materials Monday: 50 Shades of Beige" The BDC has a small collection of original Civil War era newspapers. There are 43 individual issues printed between 1860 and 1865, mostly of New York newspapers, in the Research Room. All are in very fragile condition so I handle them very infrequently. Many are available over the internet in newspaper databases - and we insist that you use those rather than our quite brittle ones. The difference in paper quality between the Northern newspapers and the two printed under Confederate government is striking. The original newspapers were last on display as part of the Library's rather extensive "One County Reads the Civil War" project in 2013. Keeping them stored well in acid-free boxes, protected from ultraviolet light, and with minimal handling should extend their survival at least for another 50 to 100 years.

October 31 - Today's "Materials Monday: 50 Shades of Beige" selection is a Civil War era pay receipt that is part of the Beaufort County Historical Society archive that we share through the Research Room. Learn more about the document and the Connecticut First Light Battery in Connections.

Also related to Archives Month:

October 21 - Explore at least some of what's in our manuscript collections using our online finding aids. Finding aids are inventories created by archival and manuscript repositories to provide information about specific collections and are used by researchers to determine whether materials within a collection may be relevant to their research.

October 24 - Example of the value of archives in establishing the historic record. [We now know the date of the first copyrighted motion picture.]

October 29 - Now that Olivia is here fulltime, I decided to work a bit on the Finding Aids backlog as a nod to Archives Month. The Materials Mondays post for December 12th will tell you all about what was lost and now is found - courtesy of some concentrated time for research.

There was no overall theme to the posts about Black History this month.

October 12 - "Black History Note Wednesday:" The 31 March 1932 issue of the Bluffton Newsletter carried this "Announcement: There will be a moving picture exhibition at the Campbell A.M.E. Church, 8 P. M. Monday, April 4th. High Power Electric Light Plant showing the life of our Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, the life of Moses, Judgment of King Solomon and Jepthta's daughter, and the poetic vision of the Sinner's Life beyond the Grave."

October 26 - "Black History Note Wednesday:" The 1st South Carolina Volunteers, later the 33rd United States Colored Troops, were the first black unit of the Civil War. Preceding the famous 54th Massachusetts—seen in the film Glory—by one year, these South Carolina slaves turned soldiers were noted for their courage, discipline, and pride, continuing to serve the Union cause even while temporarily disbanded. They fought for years with little or no pay, poor equipment, and constant pressure and abuse from both North and South. This brief history is told mostly through the letters and journals of their commanding officer Lt. Col. Charles T. Trowbridge [in the book Nineteenth Century Freedom Fighters]. The BDC has a copy, there are multiple copies available through the BCL's local history sections at the branch libraries, and there's even an e-book copy on Hoopla that you can read on your personal communication device. In other words, there is no reason - other than the lack of a valid BCL library card - that you cannot learn more about this important locally raised Civil War Union unit.

About Poisoned Books, Spectral Matters and Halloween:

October 11 - Since we're in the month of Eerie, here's a project that I learned about very recently. Its name makes it a perfect entry for October: "Poisoned Book Project" at Winterthur Library. Sounds more like a murder mystery title than a preservation issue, don't you think? New task to add to my increasingly long "hope to do before retirement checklist:" "Eyeball the clothbound books in the BDC for green 19th century bindings. If found, devise a preservation and safety handling plan." One of the main reasons I still come to work is because doing so gives me the opportunity to learn something new every day. To always be learning is a very high priority value for me as a person.

October 23 - For those who like to aren't afraid of bumping into some of Beaufort County's spectral spirits - or for those who want to make sure to avoid them: We share a few of the spooky stories about Gauche, the Lovers of Fripp Island , the ever popular Land's End Light and more in this 7-part series.

October 22 - Fun historical fact: Early European Americans carved turnips –not pumpkins–to ward away evil spirits. This oldie but goodie article from The Guardian (UK) explains how the tradition evolved into the pumpkin carving we associate with Halloween today.

October 28 - Here's a vintage way to give yourself - and your grandkids - a unique Halloween treat: try solving some of the All Hallow's Eve themed puzzles from the Chronicling America historic newspapers database.

October 30 - One of my favorite reference questions ever tells an eerie tale... in Connections, the BDC's longest running blog.

Related to Materials in the BDC - apropos the 2017/2018-2020/2021 Strategic Plan Priority 1 Level  Communications Goal: 

October 1 - Celebrate World Postcard Day by enjoying the Russell Arnsberger Postcard Collection that is hosted for us at the Lowcountry Digital Library. The direct link to the 350+ postcards is bit.ly/2q8VS3e. BTW: The Research Room has 3 other major collections of postcards that can only be viewed on site. Make an appointment to come in and see more! bdc@bcgov.net; 843-255-6468

October 7 - If you are (or are not) planning on attending the free The Water is Wide Panel Discussion during the Pat Conroy Literary Festival on October 28th, just know that the BCL has boocoodles of copies (in print, as audio or e-book) of Conroy's teaching memoir to borrow in advance of the discussion.

October 8 - Read about what's "New and (New to Us) in the Research Room."

October 17 - In honor of International Archaeology Day: The BDC contains some 200 archaeological (also spelled archeological) reports about properties in the former Beaufort District. Contact us to learn more about the scope of our collection and the properties studied: 843-255-6468 or bdc@bcgov.net. 

October 18 - Read about what's currently on display in the Research Room - and why Olivia picked what she did. Stories of the Civil War

October 20 - The Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022 continues. This month's selection, genre "Historical Romance" is "Beaufort 1849" by Karen Lynn Allen. There's more in the BDC's Connections blog about my choice.

October 26 - Celebrate Beaufort District's most celebrated author [i.e. Pat Conroy] on what would have been his 77th birthday.

October 27 - Interested in local Civil War Confederate troops? Try these titles from the BDC. (A few are also available through the local history sections at the Branch Libraries too.)

Related to Newspaper Week:

October 2 - Today begins National Newspaper Week 2022. The Research Room has some local newspapers on microfilm and some paper copies of a few more recent ones. If you want the full list, just ask bdc@bcgov.net and I shall send it to you.

October 2 - I was recently introduced to Elephind, a search engine for 200 million-plus items from more than 4,300 newspaper titles. Elephind searches big collections (including the aforementioned Chronicling America) as well as small, such as academic archives, and goes overseas to include plenty of Australian papers. I don't see any obvious South Carp;oma related newspapers included - at least not for any of my Beaufort District based 18th - 20th century ancestors - but you might have better luck.

October 5 - "Black History Note Wednesday:" In honor of National Newspaper Week: The Beaufort Tribune of 1874-1876 is considered a Black publication since William J. Whipper was part owner. It is available online through the Chronicling America website. We do not happen to have this particular newspaper on microfilm in the Research Room. [Note: See Stop #4 in the linked Connections article for additional information about Whipper.]

Sharing as Public Service Announcements:

October 13 - The Composting Guide from Beaufort County was selected as a state document of the month for August by the SC State Library. They opined that "The natural color scheme and verbiage inspire even the novice gardener to dig into composting."

October 14 - Heads up: The Fall Staff Development Day for staff falls on Wed., October 19th. We'll be working on the latest suggestions for the Library's next Strategic Plan.

October 14 - Just sharing as a historical and cultural heritage notice - particularly since October is Archaeology Month. The Clotilda was the last known slave ship to sail into the South. The wreck was discovered in the Mobile River in Alabama in 2019. The blurb says "You’ll hear from the archaeologists exploring the shipwreck, the historians researching its history, and the descendants of the people who were brought over on the ship, as they work to preserve the Clotilda and ensure that its legacy and its stories are not forgotten." [Note: This webinar was held in the past.]

October 15 - Thomas E. Miller, one of this area's most prominent Black men during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is the South Carolina African American History Calendar October 2022 honoree.

October 23 - Get your wallet ready ... to purchase lots of good books at the annual Friends of the Beaufort Library (and St. Helena and Lobeco and BDC) Book Sale! I'll be roaming over there myself on Saturday, November 5th so be sure to say "Hey!" if you see me.

October 25 - Just sharing for another local cultural heritage organization: Got Artifacts??? The HHI Archaeology Chapter will hold its annual “What the Heck is It?” program Saturday October 29th, 1:00 to 4:00 PM in the Coastal Discovery Museum, 70 Honey Horn Drive, Hilton Head Island. Drs. Eric Poplin, Vice President Brockington Inc, and Ron Anthony, retired archaeologist at the Charleston Museum, will comprise analyze, identify, and date the artifacts brought to the session. Note: This session had to be rescheduled due to the expected impacts of Hurricane Ian. [Note: This event has happened already.]

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15th. I made one more post about the Hispanic heritage of Beaufort District: 

October 9 - Have you visited the Charlesfort- Santa Elena historic site on Parris Island? The base is now open to the public as long as you follow the rules.

We opened Season 6 of the joint Beaufort History Museum/Beaufort County Library local history series coordinated by the Beaufort District Collection with Jackson Canaday's program about the history of one of our Confederate units. 

October 4 - Today's the day that Season 6 of the Beaufort History Museum - Beaufort County Library local history series opens. I look forward to seeing all registrants at 2 pm this afternoon.

October 6 - Check out a few snaps from our most recent program held with the Beaufort History Museum.

All in all I made a total of 35 Facebook posts in October - which means that I am still doing too many per my Performance Review goal for the period April 1, 2022 - March 31, 2023. Yet there was considerable demand for the Library system to beef up its social media presence per the Strategic Plan focus groups held earlier this year. In other words, I'm in a perpetual state of quandry of "Do I stay the course?" or not.

Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Historical Romance

According to the Novelist Plus database a romance must : Tell a story of two people (of different, same or trans-gender) who overcome some adversity(ies) to live their version of "happily ever after" - which in this case is "historical" insofar as the novel is set in an earlier time period. All this means that the BDC Research Room is, understandably I think, a little light on the genre. The BDC is an historical collection mostly consisting of non-fiction materials about the people, places, events and themes of the area's past. However, there is one title in the BDC Research Room that fits the bill as this month's "Historical Romance" selection.  

That title is Beaufort 1849: A Novel of Antebellum South Carolina by Karen Lynn Allen (San Francisco, CA: Cabbages and Kings Press, 2011). It meets all the "romance" and "historical" requirements above. 

Jasper Wainwright, a Southerner by birth, has spent a dozen years away from his family's plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina. During his travels he has become critical of slavery. To the chagrin of most everyone in his social circle, except the lovely, talented and of marriageable age Cara Randall, he brings his opinions about enslavement with him upon his return. And therein lies the historical romance.  

Reviewers on Amazon.com have called the novel "intelligent, interesting and engaging" and "full of evocative detail and compelling characters." It is "a compelling and complex story of love found and lost." 

A West Coaster by birth and residence, author Karen Lynn Allen studied Chaucer and engineering at Stanford University and entered the corporate world before returning to her love of writing. So far, she has published three novels: Pearl City Control Theory (1999); Beaufort 1849 (2011); and Universal Time (2015). 

The BDC Research Room has a copy for permanent retention and there are copies one can borrow through SCLENDS.

Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Literary Fiction

The "Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Literary Fiction" choice this month is an easy slam dunk. Who better to represent September's category of Literary Fiction than Pat Conroy? 

The Beaufort County Library has a long standing interest in documenting the life and career of author Pat Conroy. 

Almost from the moment Pat Conroy arrived in Beaufort as a teenaged military dependent, he embraced the community as his own. It was a sometime contentious relationship as matters seldom were simple in his life. During the course of his writing career, he became internationally recognized as one of the best and best-selling authors of Southern literature.

Visit the BDCBCL: Links, Lists, and Finding Aids blog to explore all that the Beaufort County Library and its special collections and archives unit, the Beaufort District Collection, offers about this man and his work. 

I put in active links so that you can go straight into the SCLENDS catalog to borrow most of the items, provided, of course, that you have a valid Beaufort County Library card. 

Seeing as how September is always Library Card Sign-up Month, there's no better time to apply! 

Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2022: Young Adult

The selection in this month's Challenge category of "Young Adult" was easy-peasy as the Research Room has precisely the perfect title. It was authored by a native Beaufortonian who has been credited with starting the literary genre! And it also fits as a "50 Shades of Beige" item, too. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head was on school reading lists for 50 years after its original publication. It remains in print and available through major online booksellers.  As her daughter Nancy Head Thode said during a BDC/ Pat Conroy Literary Center presentation on March 27, 2019, "I think having an out of wedlock child is what prompted her to write [it.] It's a story that has some similarity to hers. In the case of Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, two teenagers struggle with an out of wedlock pregnancy." 

Ann Head's real name was  Anne Wales Christensen Head Morse. She came from a prominent Beaufort family. The author's grandmother, Abbie Holmes Christensen, came to Beaufort during the Civil War to teach the recently freed slaves on the Sea Islands. Her father was Niels Christensen, local businessman, land owner and South Carolina State Senator.  Born on October 30, 1915,  Anne grew up in both Beaufort and Boston, Massachusetts. 

Anne wrote her first novel in childhood though she "abandoned [it] when she became more attached to the villain than to the hero."  She married Howard Head of Philadelphia on February 26, 1939 but they divorced in 1944. Their child was the aforementioned and quoted Nancy Head Thode. Her second husband was Dr. Stanley Morse. He was the father of her daughter, Stacey. Head published over 50 short stories in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, McCalls, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal. She wrote four internationally published novels and was also Pat Conroy’s first creative writing teacher. 

Here's what that famed author wrote of her in The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes from My Life (2004): "She was the first novelist I'd ever met in the flesh. She looked like a woman who would not tolerate a preposition at the end of a sentence or the anarchy of a dangling participle... She required that my adjectives actually mean something when I landed them into one of my overloaded paragraphs." 

Anne Christensen Head Morse died in Beaufort on May 7, 1968 from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 52. At the time of her death, she was negotiating with a Hollywood studio to turn the book into a movie. A few years later her book was adapted into a "Movie of the Week" starring Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Christopher Norris in 1971. 

The Pat Conroy Literary Center recorded our co-sponsored lecture "Remembering Ann Head: Beaufort's Forgotten Author" presented by Nancy Thode on March 27, 2019.

The BDC Research Room contains copies of her novels, Fair with Rain (1957);  Always in August (1961); Everybody Adored Cara (1963);  and Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1967); and a fat vertical file of clippings and some of her magazine articles for our customers to study by appointment. To make the arrangements, call 843-255-6468 or email BDC@bcgov.net.

Diversify Your Reading Challenge: Contemporary Fiction

Because as a person I am not particularly interested in fiction, and as manager of the BDC I don't have to "do" fiction, I had to look up what the July 2022 category meant.  According to Novelist+ the key aspects of "Contemporary Fiction" are that it is based in current times, has human characters, and includes no elements of fantasy. The pickings are pretty slim for this category in the BDC. If not T.D. Johnston and the Short Story America series published in Beaufort, SC, I would have little to share with you today. 

T.D. Johnston is a  Beaufort resident and award winning short story writer. We purchased a copy of Weeding for Eisenhower: Stories (2021) a collection of 18 stand alone tales that one reviewer called "oral storytelling written down with an honesty and urgency of a writer at the top of his form." The BDC is the only unit within SCLENDS to hold this particular title. We also purchased a copy of his  Friday Afternoon and Other Stories (2016) which contains a dozen of Johnston's tales. The Beaufort County Library holds 4 of the 6 copies of this title within SCLENDS. (Literary history is important too.)  

In addition to being a writer of the short story form, Johnston edits the Short Story America series. According to the Short Story America website, its "mission is to bring the short story back into the mainstream of American culture, to bring the short story author back into prominence in American literature, and to enhance American students' awareness and education in the art and value of the short story." 

Volume 1 (shown above in shiny orange) entitled Short Story America Anthology contained "56 Great Contemporary Short Stories" (and no copyright publication date on the title page or the verso of the title page but which came out in 2011). Each subsequent volume has fewer short stories but seems to have stabilized around to 30 - 35 selections per volume. I like that Johnston included Author Biographies in volumes 1 - 4. You can see the Table of Contents (abbreviated v. TOC) on the Short Story America website under the "Anthology" tab as shown in the image below.

There are at present a total of 6 volumes containing more than 225 short stories that you can enjoy inside the Research Room, subject to staff availability to sit with you. 

Diversify Your Reading 2022 Challenge: Thriller

Back on January 11th [2022] I proclaimed here in Connections that I could cover the monthly themes offered by the Diversify Your Reading Facebook page with materials in the BDC and/or Local History sections. Pickings are a little slim this month but the BDC does indeed have three titles that qualify as "Thrillers." 

So what are thrillers and suspense stories? According to the NoveList Plus database: Though similar to mysteries - which tend to focus on a criminal act that has happened - thrillers and suspense stories are more about a crime that is ongoing or is coming. Mysteries allow readers to puzzle out whodunit. Thrillers and suspense stories feature how a protagonist tries to thwart or takes action against an ongoing or impending crime. Emotions get involved in thrillers: plots usually evolve quickly with lots action-packed, high pressured decisions and events. Readers are often suspended between thinking that everything will be okay for the protagonist or thrown into the depths of despair that the protagonist cannot meet his/her objective. A sense of menace tends to build to a dramatic climax. Endings are bittersweet though often have an underlying message that ultimately someday good will triumph over evil.   

Dead Low Water (2019) by lowcountry born and bred author Roger Pinckney is based on real events related to my April selection. Pinckney uses the Harbour Town lighthouse as a metaphor for what lurks beneath the surface of human relationships and politics. When the owners of the Harbour Town marina turn up missing, two cops go rogue trying to find them and uncover a vast and seething criminal conspiracy, embezzlement, smuggling and murder.   

Lowcountry Boil (2003) by Carl T. Smith also found inspiration from local events involving a notorious drug trafficking case of the early 1980s. In Smith's novel Sam Larkin and undercover federal agent face an entrenched society willing to look the other way when crime pays and a group of high-profile conspirators ready to kill to make sure it does. There are a number of titles that Sam Larkin's story but most fall outside of the BDC's collection development policy. (There are some who think that Pinckney's Reefer Moon draws inspiration from Operation Jackpot too. A non-fiction account of the drug sting by Jason Ryan is titled Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting that Launched the War on Drugs (2011). I hope to host author Ryan at least one more time before I retire.)  

Ten Days in Brazzaville (2011) by Beaufort attorney and Island News columnist Scott Graber is a legal thriller with most of the action occurring on the African continent. A 750 word letter received in his lowcountry office takes him to sub-Saharan Africa and the denouement upends Jake Timrod's  understanding of how the world really works. We also have Graber's self-published novel Malachi (2009) in the Research Room. 

Due to a permanent reduction in staff, the BDC Research Room remains open by advance appointment only. Please make the necessary arrangements at least 3 to 7 days in advance: bdc@bcgov.net; 843-255-6468.