Appalachian State University Memory Project
What is the Appalachian State University Memory Project?
For many decades, Belk Library's Special Collections has accrued approximately 1,000 oral history interviews documenting the Appalachian Region, particularly Watauga County and Appalachian State University campus life. Conducted by students, faculty, community members, and oral historian professional, these collections vary in subject from stock car racing to lifestyle of Melungeons to Appalachian administrators to traditional herb gatherers.
In 2006, Belk Library Archivists Kathy Staley and Pam Mitchem began the Appalachian State University Memory Project to documents the physical, economic, social, administrative, and academic development of Appalachian State University and its surrounding community. Information gathered from this project provides unique prospectives on ASU's history and highlights individual contributions. The goal of the Appalachian State University Oral History Project is to create a collection of oral history interviews that will be housed in the Special Collections and become a part of the permanent collection to celebrate and preserve ASU history. Topics covered include club and sports activities; gender-based rules, relationship between community and college, favorite professors, women's roles on campus, Dr. B.B. Dougherty's personality, courtship, dorm life, classes, how taught to be teachers, Chapel, buildings and natural surroundings, faculty-student relationships, and national events such as U.S. wars, Great Depression, desegregation, the Red Scare, and North Carolina educational trends.
Get Involved!
- Volunteer to be interviewed
- Sample Questions from ASU Oral History Interviews
- Release Forms
- Brief Biographical Form to assist interviewers structure our questions appropriately and to place your story in its proper context
About our Collections
- Listing of Special Collections' Oral History Collections
- How to Get Copies of Transcriptions or Oral History Tapes
Learn More about Appalachian History through our Oral Histories
- Listen to ASU founder B.B. Dougherty (1956 Interview with former Boone mayor Wade Brown)
Mailing Address:
Special Collections
Belk Library and Information Commons
Appalachian State University
P.O. Box 32019
Boone, NC 28608-2019
For more information, contact Pam Mitchem at (828) 262-7422 or pricemtchemp@appstate.edu
