Kentucky Library and Museum Online -- Description of Organization

Organization

The Collection is divided into:

Folklife Archives collects student and faculty research on folk art, urban legends, folk music, beliefs, traditional crafts, and folkways. Listen to the voices of Kentuckians through the reel-to-reel, audio, and videotape interviews and performances. Lynwood Montell, known for his research on ghosts and Southern Gospel music, and Sarah Gertrude Knott, founder of the National Folk Festival, are but two of the outstanding folklorists who have chosen this repository to make their research available.

The Kentucky Library collects printed materials about Kentucky, including approximately 70,000 volumes pertaining to: Mammoth Cave and other caves; religious denominations (including the Shakers); state, county, and town histories; biographies; hymnals, travelers' accounts; geological survey reports; state documents; 19th century children's books; genealogical compilations; and a wide variety of other subjects. Rare books and periodicals of subjects other than Kentucky are also a part of the collection. Access to these books and periodicals is available through the Western Kentucky University online catalog TOPCAT 2000.

The Kentucky Library also houses non-book materials including magazines, maps, sheet music, broadsides, photographs, postcards, political memorabilia, newspapers, scrapbooks, phonograph records and ephemera.

The Kentucky Museum invites you to visit pioneer and Victorian Kentucky and explore 200 years of a typical Kentucky county through our permanent exhibits. Changing exhibits draw from treasures in our collection and traveling exhibitions. The collection’s strengths include glassware and ceramics, 19th and 20th century garments, quilts; dolls, cast iron and tin mechanical toys, miniature furniture, paintings, prints, sculptures; and furniture. Providing educational programs and tours for elementary, secondary, and college students as well as the general public.

Manuscripts collects Kentuckians’ unpublished diaries, family papers and correspondence, war letters, church records, business papers, memoirs, South Union Shaker records, literary papers; theses; land grants; court records, historical documents dating back to the 1700s and includes Kentucky and national political collections. Documenting local, national, and international events, these papers reveal details about day-to-day life in 19th and 20th century Kentucky and around the world. Researchers interested in the Civil War, World War II, steamboats and South Union Shakers must visit this collection. Congressmen William H. Natcher and Tim Lee Carter, Kentucky authors Janice Holt Giles and Alice Hegan Rice, and prominent families, including Green and Underwood, have chosen the Kentucky Library and Museum to care for their legacy.

University Archives holds the official records and publications documenting the history of Western Kentucky University. The Archives also endeavors to collect and preserve materials relating to schools that either predated Western on "the Hill" or to which Western is related, such as the Southern Normal School and Bowling Green Business College, Pleasant J. Potter College, Ogden College and Bowling Green Business University.

In addition to official records, we collect on everyday student life, including scrapbooks, snapshots, legends, oral histories, letter sweaters, class rings, trophies, pennants, and University treasures such as Big Red’s costume, cheerleading uniforms, championship basketballs, and Space Shuttle Astronaut Terry Wilcutt’s red towel. Legendary basketball coach E. A. Diddle and 1950s quartet The Hilltoppers have shared their stories through University Archives.