Historic Russell County Day

 

Join us to celebrate Russell County History! The Library of Virginia is coming to Russell County Public Library with their LVA On the Go van. They will offer short talks and workshops listed below. There will be children’s activities and a chance to record your stories about the RCPL or your family. Where was the library the first time you visited? Do you remember the bookmobile - and Marion, the bookmobile driver?

Come to explore research resources, discuss regional and family history with knowledgeable LVA staff, discover educational materials, and much more. The Sons of Confederate Veterans will be camping on the lawn for the day, so you can even take a trip back in time.

You can visit all three Russell County museums this Saturday. The Dante Coal Miners and Railroad Museum, the Old Courthouse at Dickensonville, and the Honaker Heritage Museum will be open on Saturday, October 21. Explore your history and heritage!

10:30 am  Genealogy 101
11:00 am   Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative
Noon         Digital Resources from the Library of Virginia
1:00 pm    Russell County in Maps

Historic maps of Russell County will be on display in the Lebanon Library Meeting Room in October. And if you stop by the Honaker or Lebanon Library this month, we’ll give you a question you can use to start writing your family history. By the end of the month, you’ll have several pages of your family history.

Learn more about the Library of Virginia’s 200th anniversary. And visit your Russell County Public Library in October when we celebrate our 64th birthday.

 

RCPL in the Age of COVID

The COVID pandemic has launched the Russell County Public Library into new territory. We are trying new ways to allow you to use the library--safely. New print materials are still arriving slowly, so we are building our downloadable collection of ebooks and digital audiobooks.

Our new holds lockers

Tablets and e-readers will be available for check out later this fall. So even if you don't have a tablet or Internet access, you can borrow an e-reader and download a few books while in the library. 

RCPL is excited about our new holds lockers. You can pick up the material you placed on hold without entering the building. The lockers will be on the porch of each library. You'll get a message that your hold has arrived and is available for pickup in a locker. Input your simple four-digit PIN number and the locker opens!

Lebanon Library will also get a new after-hours, outdoor book drop. We plan to place it so that you can drive by and return your library materials when the library is closed--no getting out in the rain and snow. 

Our first virtual program for adults and teens has launched. Family History Month is a mini-genealogy course with its own website, videos, links, and resources. Check it out.

To help our school students, RCPL is providing each student with an RCPL card so that they can access our ebooks for youth. The school librarians are issuing each student a patron card number (no actual card) that only allows digital access. It looks like we added a lot of patrons to our database, but over 3500 of them are named "Generic Student."

We are tweaking and building new services to meet patron needs in the times in which we live. The public library isn't merely a building. The public library is a community institution meeting the needs of citizens for information, access, education, and entertainment.

Posted by Kelly McBride Delph

Digital and Distanced

As the summer ends, Russell County Public Library is moving more programs to digital platforms like Facebook and Zoom. Storytime returned today, September 9, on Facebook. In the weeks after, watch for book groups and crochet groups to start ‘meeting’ online.

Newspaper clipping in the Lebanon PTA minutes

We have beefed up our collection of juvenile ebooks since the children will have limited access to their school libraries under the current hybrid schedule. We are also issuing each K-12 student a generic digital-access-only library card. The school librarians will distribute them in late September.

As the coronavirus continues through the population, everyone continues to adjust and become accustomed to the new normal. We will provide programs and suggest books and movies, allowing you to keep that safe distance of 6 feet.

We have loads of old, archival material coming available online this fall. School pictures from Castlewood (1940s-1970s), the Parent Teacher Association Minutes for Lebanon Elementary (1928-1950), business records for J.H. Lockhart, Dentist, of Honaker, and more will be linked from our Local History Page by October 1.

Family History Month will be celebrated in October. To introduce you to genealogy and recording your family history--while on a little screen--our plans include an ‘instructional’ video, a video chat/check-in, a webpage with links and downloadable pages, and a packet with forms and hints to help you each week of the month.

Posted by Kelly McBride Delph

Snapshots of History

Photography has been around since the early 1800s, but for the first 100 years, it was mainly used by professionals and the wealthy. Older techniques were labor-intensive, requiring specialized equipment and expert knowledge. Eastman Kodak released the first film camera in 1888, but at $25 (roughly $650 today) it remained prohibitively expensive.

Brownie 2 camera

Eastman Kodak finally brought photography to the masses with the introduction of the Brownie camera in 1900. Retailing for just $1, it was initially marketed to children but became popular with adults as well. By 1905 Kodak had sold 10 million Brownies.

This democratized photography. Now ordinary men and women could take photos of the people and places that mattered to them. These candid shots feel more real because we can see people going about their lives much like we do today - maybe even in the same places.

RCPL's digital photo archive preserves our history by showing where and how the people of Russell County lived, worked, played, and worshipped. And we want you to help! Saturday, August 24, is Photo Scan Day. Bring your old photographs in to be scanned. We'll add the digital photo to our archive, give you a digital copy and a new print copy as well. We're especially interested in places like churches, schools, and businesses.

We'll be open an extra two hours until 5 PM for Photo Scan Day, so please come and help us preserve our shared history!

Source:
https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-brownie-camera-made-everyone-a-photographer/


Contributed by Katie Gilmer

Reunion Season

The Long-Couch House in Dante

The Summer Reading Program is the library’s big focus in the summer, but family reunions are so prevalent that this library staffer also thinks of summer as reunion season. Family reunions bring back folks who have moved away. Summer also brings many visitors to the RCPL’s Local History Collection; people who are tracing their family history often find that the family came through Russell County in the past. Family reunions abound, but it’s not just family reunions. Many high school classes meet during the summer.  Old schoolhouses or churches are cleaned up and homecomings are held. 

This weekend, the Dante Reunion is taking center stage in Russell County. Turkey’s Foot was the original name of the community (because the hollows looked like a turkey’s foot when viewed on a map.) Once the largest community in Russell County, Dante thrived when the Clinchfield Coal Company was headquartered there.  Dante boasted a movie theatre, hospital, schools, stores, bank, hotel, and a beer garden. Much of this was owned by the company but it made for a thriving community.

Dante still has a post office, fire department, museum, and the will to live. One of the first communities in Russell County to try to revitalize itself, Dante continues to try to buck the trend of dying small towns.  Dante’s diverse history and culture make it unique in Russell County. Much of the diversity was due to the coal mines; immigrants working in the coal mine included people from what are now the Slavic republics. African-Americans worked in the mines in sufficient numbers the county provided a high school for their children during segregation. When the high school, called the Artie Lee School, closed the students began attending Castlewood High School.

Visit the Dante Coal Mining and Railroad Museum to learn more about Russell County's history. 

Posted by Kelly McBride Delph