One of our Manuscripts and Archives Processors, Sai Estep, recently attended the Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual conference in Anaheim, CA, titled, “ARCHIVES * RECORDS 2025: Making it Count.” The theme of this year’s conference was all about the impact of archival work, with an emphasis on real-world results. Session topics included talks on how other archives are advocating for their work, examples of successful use of artificial intelligence (with caveats), and tools to increase access and collaboration. Conferences such as this provide special opportunities for professionals to gather and share ideas and information, allowing them to return to their homebase with a renewed outlook on their field.
While there, Sai presented a poster on the Blowing Rocket Digitization Project, a collaborative initiative between University Libraries and several community partners–Digital Watauga, Watauga County Historical Society, Blowing Rock Community Library, Blowing Rock Historical Society, and DigitalNC–to locate and digitize surviving copies of the historical newspaper, the Blowing Rocket.
Created in 1932, the Blowing Rocket Newspaper covered events unfolding in Watauga County, NC (specifically the Blowing Rock area). Residents and researchers have long desired a way to readily locate and access surviving copies of this historical newspaper, but previous efforts were unsuccessful. Challenges such as locating, inventorying, and digitizing these papers was difficult, since the papers were held in different locations and projects such as this one require resources like time and funding. But by engaging a diverse set of community partners, this ad-hoc consortium was able to find, digitize, and upload surviving copies from the years 1932-1950, making them freely available to users online.
Archival initiatives can be daunting, especially when they involve multiple players from outside agencies, all approaching it with their specific outlook and goals. However, this project was successful due to the multiple-phased collaboration between a diverse group of partners from various-sized organizations. By working to each group's strengths, avoiding a rigid top-down approach, and keeping our common goal in mind, the consortium was able to take an idea beyond the nascent discussion phase and turn it into reality. This initiative is an excellent example of how University Libraries can engage and work with the local community.
These issues of the Blowing Rocket are now available at DigitalNC, an online platform that digitizes and publishes historic materials relating to North Carolina. The folks at DigitalNC also wrote a blog post about this initiative, which we appreciate!
Image shows the front page of the Blowing Rocket newspaper, Volume 9, Number 3, dated July 5, 1940. The headline reads: "Town Route is Set for Parkway." Included is a portrait of the Reverend Walter K. Keys accompanied by an article announcing his installation as pastor for Rumple Church.
The Blowing Rocket newspaper