The Kentucky Pack Horse Library: A Digital Tale
By Rebecca Amerson
I saw a copy of Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians
of Kentucky at a discount book sale last year and was intrigued!
Theirs is an incredible story.
Following the Great Depression, Kentucky was considered to be
one of the poorest areas in the country. President Roosevelt’s
New Deal was designed to help the country recover and to provide
jobs for its citizens. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) established the Pack Horse Library Project to serve the
rural areas of Eastern Kentucky. These women “librarians” earned
$28 a month to travel 50-80 miles a week along creekbeds and
footpaths to bring remote families materials to read. These materials
were discards from other libraries or old magazines and newspapers
contributed by churches or other groups, but they were so happy
to have them. The librarians would read to the sick and shut-in.
Children would read to their illiterate parents and grandparents.
The devotion of these remarkable women to their patrons is a
story that will warm your heart.
To read more: http://www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/kypackhorselib.htm
For images that will touch your heart, go to Kentucky’s
digital library, http://kdl.kyvl.org/ ,
and type pack horse in the search box.
Bring a World of Primary Sources into the Classroom
A new Web site from the University of California (UC), Calisphere offers
educators, students and the public free access to more than 150,000
images, documents and other primary source materials from the libraries and
museums of the UC campuses and cultural heritage organizations across California
. Primary sources at Calisphere include photographs, documents, newspapers,
political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising
and other cultural artifacts, which reveal the diverse history and culture
of California and its role in national and world history. The materials are
organized into historical eras, from the Gold Rush to the 1970s. A great
deal of our nation’s history has roots in California! –BigDealBook
Newsletter
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/