Food & Drink History Resources @Virginia Tech (and Beyond): Digital Collections (Not exclusively food & drink)

The South-Central Georgia Folklife Project collection resulted from an ethnographic field project conducted in the summer of 1977 by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress and the Arts Experiment Station of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia. The eight-county area chosen for the study is in the center of the "Wiregrass" region of Georgia. The collection consists of approximately 376 sound recordings, 14,300 photographs, 13 containers of manuscripts, 8 videocassettes, and 31 pen-and-ink drawings, which document the folklife of south-central Georgia in July and August 1977. Topics of research were hymn singing, fiddle and banjo music, vernacular architecture, quilts, boat building, occupations, foodways, jokes, and stories from the region. Approximately 300 hours of audio were recorded at various local events.

Includes some handwritten receipt books.

The Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection, SdArch SNP, (formerly SC# 4030), consists of 135 interviews of people who were living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia prior to the creation of the Shenandoah National Park. Most of the interviewees resided on land that was claimed by eminent domain by the commonwealth of Virginia and subsequently turned over to the US government in the 1930s. Topics discussed by interviewees include mountain folklife, music, food preservation, traditional medicine, agriculture and harvesting, bark peeling, moonshining, chores and family life, and schooling with additional references to the Civilian Conservation Corp, the New Deal, and residents' feelings towards the creation of the Shenandoah National Park.

The digital collections emphasize North Carolina and the American South. Topics include the experience of African Americans, the Civil War, the arts, economics, and politics. Documenting the American South (DocSouth), the Library’s award-winning digital publishing initiative, provides access to important texts, images, and audio files for the study of Southern history, literature, and culture.