A New Chapter

The Randall Library at the University of North Carolina Wilmington is under transformation.  The year-long project includes an approximately 80,000-square-foot, three-story expansion at the west side along with a partial renovation of the existing exterior.

A highlight will be a new tech hub that will offer students expanded computing, a large digital makerspace, and an enhanced multimedia studio for video editing, podcast recording and more.

Planning began in summer 2018. The expansion broke ground in May 2022. The project is scheduled to be completed in stages from spring into fall 2024.

While the tech hub will embrace modern technology, the new space will also enhance the library’s mission of keeping a record of the past.

The expansion will include a home for the Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History.

“The center is both new and old in the sense that we’re rebranding it to reflect what we’ve always done, which is collect and make available factual personal papers, letters, audio-visual materials, maps and photographs,” says Dr. Nathan Saunders, director of the center. “These historic artifacts come from our Southeastern North Carolina region, which includes records from the university and items from the state of North Carolina.”

Along with a new home, the center receives a new name that better reflects the focus on the history and culture of the people and communities of Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Duplin, New Hanover, Onslow, Pender and Sampson counties.

“We want our new space to be a destination,” Saunders says. “Instead of saying, ‘Go upstairs to the library specialized collection,’ we wanted people to know they could go upstairs to the Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History.”

Officials envision the center as a destination for people interested in the history of the area, much like the North Carolina Room at the New Hanover County Library.

“We strongly feel that one cannot tell the story of Southeastern North Carolina beginning around World War I without coming to see our collections,” Saunders says. “But along the way, we discovered that the community didn’t know who we were or what we had that’s open to the public right here within our library. With all of this in mind, we wanted to make sure people knew the center’s scope, and they can trust us to care for their collections, but, more importantly, if they wanted to research the history of this area we’d be more than happy to help them.”

Some of that history is garnered from a collection of area periodicals.

“Since Dr. Saunders’ arrival to UNCW six years ago, he’s really honed the center’s scope to be Southeastern North Carolina by trying to preserve the records of small-town local news,” says Dr. Lucy Holman, dean of the library and associate provost for teaching, learning and library services.

“We’ve got a lot of modern history from WWI on up. We’ve collected and digitized the Columbus News Reporter, State Port Pilot, Wrightsville Beach Magazine, Lumina News and Island Gazette that are one of a kind and not accessible anywhere else.”

They also have archive records from television station WWAY and will have Wilmington Star-News photography archives from the public library.

The center also contains the original papers of Heyward C. Bellamy, superintendent of the New Hanover County School System from 1968 to 1981, who oversaw the integration of public schools; the documents from U.S. Congressmen Alton Lennon, who served from 1957-1973, and Douglas Carmichael “Mike” McIntyre II, who served from 1997-2015; and the records of Dr. Hubert A. Eaton, who led the desegregation lawsuit against the school district and integration of James Walker Memorial Hospital and was instrumental in launching the career of tennis legend Althea Gibson, the first black woman to win a Grand Slam title.

“We recently had a researcher from Wisconsin write a book on Althea Gibson,” Holman says. “The researcher used a lot of Dr. Hubert A. Eaton’s collection that we have here to support the basis of the book.”