How To Credit A Collection

Way back in 2007, Beaufort County Library contributed its first collection, Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection to the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL). It has since been joined by selections from the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection; images from the Hurricane of 1893; a booklet of survival stories from the Hurricane of 1893; a postcard collection; two collections of stereoscopic photographic images from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and a Confederate surgeon's medical record book. 

See all of our contributions to the LCDL thus far, and I hope to get three more up before I retire.   

Librarians, libraries, and other cultural heritage organizations are aware that how information is created, used, and shared in the 21st century is just different than it was in the past. Like most small special collections and archives organizations, the Beaufort District Collection does not make nor sell reproductions of photographs in our collections. We do not have the capability to go into the business of reproducing items from our collections to be purchased by the public.

Because of that limitation (and a few others), we provide access to select items from our holdings through our partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library. Anyone anywhere with an internet connection is encouraged to look at what we have posted. However, if you show or share images from our holdings on the LCDL, please make it known where you found the digital image and that the original  is from a particular collection online put there by the Beaufort County Library’s special collections unit, the Beaufort District Collection.

For example: 

Here is the credit line we prefer be used for the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection online: “Image courtesy of Beaufort County Library, The Lucille Hasell Culp Collection via the Lowcountry Digital Library.” (where the collection name links back to the image within the collection on the LCDL website.) 

Here is the credit line we prefer be used for the “Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection” online: “Image courtesy of Beaufort County Library, Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection via the Lowcountry Digital Library.” (where the collection name links back to the image within the collection on the LCDL website.) 

When an image used is credited in this fashion, it increases public awareness of the Beaufort County Library, the Beaufort District Collection, and the Lowcountry Digital Library and perhaps more importantly, the contribution that archival and historical collections throughout this nation make to community life. 

R.L. Johnson Medical Journal Now Online!

The BDC recently added its eighth contribution to the Lowcountry Digital Library: R.L. Johnson Medical Journal, 1863-1864, 1867-1883! It posted on February 1, 2019.

R.L. Johnson Medical Journal, [p. 8] (BDC)

Richard Love Johnson (1841 – 1913) served the Confederacy as an Assistant Surgeon with several units, most notably the 3^rd and 15^th South Carolina Infantries. Johnson was stationed at various posts during the Civil War including McPhersonville in Beaufort District. [The necessary Beaufort connection!] His handwritten entries contain the names and units of his patients, notes on their wounds, treatments, surgeries and outcomes from 1863 to 1864. 

Following the Civil War, Johnson and his family resided on Edisto Island for several years where he turned to practicing obstetrics most often at John Wright’s Seaside Plantation and Dr. William M. Bailey’s Maxcy’s Plantation. 

He also documents two veterinary cases: a cat giving birth and the removal of a tumor from a donkey’s eye. 

During his time on Edisto Island he kept accounts relating to managing a small cotton farm with freed African-American laborers. He includes the names and payments to his workers.

Johnson would later practice medicine in Louisiana and Missouri. 

He revised the journal several times adding notes about medical journal articles and updates regarding some of his patients seen in other circumstances. The latest note with a date was done in 1883. Johnson died and was buried in Rolla, Phelps County, Missouri in 1913. 

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 individuals involved and thus may be useful for genealogical purposes.

Getting a primary source document for its online debut requires a lot of work and oftentimes the skills of several or many people. In the case of the R.L. Johnson Medical Journal,  I must give credit where credit is due.

The bulk of the work fell to the BDC's former Preservation Associate, Amanda Forbes. She did almost all of the digital scans, did most of the transcription, all the coding, and as her last act of employment sent scan and metadata files to Leah Worthington at the Lowcountry Digital Library.
Kristi Spaulding Marshall proofread the transcription several times to make sure that when it left our hands, it would be as perfect as it could be.

Leah Worthington is the Digital Projects Librarian at the College of Charleston who coordinates the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative and the Lowcountry Digital Library. I asked that the Journal go up at some point between January and April 2019. She oversaw the technology applications to get the Medical Journal uploaded and posted to the LCDL website. Leah got everything done so the journal became available for use by anyone anywhere in the whole world with an internet connection to use by closing time on Friday, February 1st.


I picked the project; oversaw its implementation; wrote the collection page introduction for the LCDL website; edited the Finding Aid; and posted the Finding Aid into our BDC WordPress blog.

Way back in 2007, Beaufort County Library contributed its first collection, Phosphate, Farms and Family: The Donner Collection to the LCDL. It has since been joined by selections from the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection; images from the Hurricane of 1893; a booklet of survival stories from the Hurricane of 1893; a postcard collection; and two collections of stereoscopic photographic images from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.See all of our contributions to the LCDL at http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/contributing-institution/beaufort-county-library.

BDC's Digital Collections at the Lowcountry Digital Library

Edited and revised to include all the BCL's digital collections hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library as of 15 August 2025 - Grace Cordial 

 

The past several years have been full of transitions, both personal and work-related. As a consequence, I have been ruminating about professional choices and professional relationships formed as a consequence of my 19 years working in the Beaufort County Library system. One of my greatest professional satisfactions has come from our long-standing partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library.

The Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World.  Together with its institutional partners, LCDL helps students, scholars, and a wide range of public audiences develop a better understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry relative to the nation and the world.

• LCDL utilizes the best practices to build partnerships between scholars and information technologists to improve our collective understanding of the region in a global context.
• LCDL fosters relationships between the digital library and cultural heritage institutions. We provide digitization and metadata training and support to smaller, underfunded institutions that would, otherwise, be unable to engage in these activities.
• LCDL makes all of our content, documentation and resources freely available on-line.

LCDL is harvested and fully searchable within the South Carolina Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America, which brings our partner institutions and their collections to the national and international stage. LCDL is also indexed by Google and all other major search engines. This increased visibility, coupled with LCDL's complimentary digital preservation services, facilitates the sustainability, accessibility, and public engagement of our partners’ digital projects.

I selected two albums of family photographs donated by Professor Christopher Donner of Miami and Dr. Christopher and Ann Donner of Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 2001 as the pilot project for inclusion of public library special collections materials in the South Carolina Digital Library in 2007. I felt that this was a "win-win:" the Donner Albums contained rare images of the phosphate mining industry in Beaufort County which meant that the content was both unique and exceptional; the number of items finite (548); the items required special handling; and the format (photographs) was attractive to both scholars and the general public. (Who doesn't love to look at old pictures?) Even if the project failed, the original images would be better protected with less handling ("Reduce the handling and you will preserve the resource.") and the material could be shared with anyone anywhere in the world who had an internet connection. That first digital collection still runs in the top 15 accessed collections within the ever growing Lowcountry Digital Library more than a decade after its initial upload. Needless to say, the pilot project was a roaring success with Greenville Public Library system and the Beaufort County Library system leading the way for including the special collections materials from thirteen other public library systems in 2017.

The digitization process usually consists of 5 steps: Selection; Capturing the digital object; Describing the digital object (metadata); Storing the digital object; and, Sharing the digital object. The end result of digitization is increased usability and discoverability; more people are able to see and explore what an institution has to offer researchers.

Through the years, the Beaufort County Library has periodically added items into the Lowcountry Digital Library as staff, special events, and other tasks have allowed:

• "'Phosphate, Farms and Family:' The Donner Collection" (2007)
•  "The Lucille Hasell Culp Collection: A Celebration of Beaufort, South Carolina" (2011)
• "Beaufort Hurricane of 1893 Photograph Collection" (2015)
• "Storm Swept Coast by Rachel M. Mather, 1894" (2015) 
• "Russell J. Arnsberger Postcard Collection" (2017)
• "Civil War and Reconstruction Stereoscopes" (2018)
• "L.A. Hall Civil War and Reconstruction Eras Stereoscopic images" (2018)
• "Richard L. Johnson Medical Record Book, 1863-1864, 1867-1883" (2019)
• "Susan M. L. Wales Travel Journal, 1887-1895" (2024) 

As Amanda Forbes' final act of employment as the BDC's Preservation Associate, she submitted the digital scans and transcription of Dr. R. L. Johnson's Medical Journal for uploading into the Lowcountry Digital Library during early 2019. Due to the good services and diligence of veteran and Beloved BDC Docent, Laura Lewis, the Wales Travel Journal was uploaded in the the LCDL in 2024. 

Celebrate Postcards This Week

Selected items from our own collections

National Postcard Week is an annual event begun in 1984 to promote the study and use of postcards for entertainment, education, and as artwork. It is held in the first full week of May. This year National Postcard Week runs from Sunday, May 6 through Saturday, May 12.  

Suggested activities to celebrate the occasion:

1) View Arnsberger Collection postcards online through our partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library http://bit.ly/2q8VS3e

2) View some Palmetto Studios postcards in the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection online through our partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library http://bit.ly/2HwnJ8W

3) Come see selected postcards from the Rev. Robert Peeples and staff curated postcard collections in our Research Room during our regular hours of operation

4) We're posting a very special postcard per day on our Facebook page during National Postcard Week, 2018 (again that is Sunday, May 6 - Saturday, May 12). http://on.fb.me/1dBlyx1

Please contact us for information about other postcards and local history materials we have: bdc@bcgov.net or call 843-255-6468.

Arnsberger Postcards Online!

Latest update:  All links are correct as of 13 April 2023. - gmc 

National Postcard Week is an annual event to promote the use of postcards, held in the first full week of May since 1984. And this year we're celebrating all week by featuring a postcard a day on Facebook May 7 - May 13, 2017 from the Beaufort County Library’s latest online collection of special materials from the Beaufort District Collection. [Hint: Type "postcard" into the Search feature on the BDC's Facebook page to get a whole lot more than 7 postcard images.]

• Factoid: The study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology.

We have hundreds of postcards in the Beaufort District Collection in scrapbooks, in archival boxes, in binders, etc. 

• We have a postcard collection that staff assembled through the years on the topic of Beaufort’s history. 
• Lucille Hasell Culp took photographs in Beaufort, turned them into postcards that she sold, and collected postcards of other places where she had lived or visited.  You can see 41 of those cards in the "Lucille Hasell Culp Collection: A Celebration of Beaufort, SC" at http://bit.ly/2qwAOXa. 
• We have postcards collected by Rev. Dr. Robert E.H. Peeples donated by the Heritage Library to our Research Room that concentrate on the World War II era. 
• And just in time for National Postcard Week, we’ve posted the Russell J. Arnsberger Postcard Collection online in the Lowcountry Digital Library.

  

The Russell J. Arnsberger Postcard Collection is comprised of over 350 postcards in two albums of houses, businesses, public buildings, street views, military base activities and structures in and around Beaufort, South Carolina. Some built structures pictured are no longer extant or have been greatly altered. Among the publishers represented in this collection of 20th century postcards are Albertype Company, Dexter Press, Charles G. Luther’s Pharmacy, the Crescent Drug Company, W.R. Bristol, Palmetto Studios and Photo Arts of Winnsboro, SC. Arnsberger volunteered his time and deltiological expertise to the Beaufort District Collection while he was a resident and as a parting gift, donated his personal collection of Beaufort area postcards to the Library in 2008.  

Based at the College of Charleston, the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World. Together with its institutional partners, LCDL helps students, scholars, and a wide range of public audiences develop a better understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry relative to the nation and the world. Beaufort County Library's Beaufort District Collection staff has been working with LCDL staff for more than a decade bringing some of the Library's holdings to the internet. And the LCDL is a hub for aggregating materials for inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America which means that select items from your local library can be used by students, researchers, family historians, anyone through the DPLA portal. 

Visit all BeaufortCounty Library’s Online Collections in the Lowcountry Digital Library.

 
Please contact us for information about other postcards and local history materials we have and to make an appointment to visit the Research Room: bdc@bcgov.net or call 843-255-6468 for assistance.