Local figure
Mary Lindsay Thornton became librarian of the university's North Carolina Collection in 1917, when it held about 1,500 items in a small upstairs room of the library building that later became Hill Music Hall. When she retired in 1958 it held more than 150,000. She died in Chapel Hill in 1973 and was buried in the town cemetery.
Source: NCpedia (Dictionary of North Carolina Biography): Thornton, Mary Lindsay
1891–1973 · Dates from the Library of Congress · On the Friends’ Local Authors roster → · Library of Congress authority record ↗
7 works about Mary Lindsay Thornton are indexed here.
Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 2 dated events in the chronology →
People named in the same dated entries as Mary Lindsay Thornton, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.
Works about or by Mary Lindsay Thornton. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.
Materials gathered in 2016 by Elizabeth P. Fowler of San Francisco about her great-aunt Mary Lindsay Thornton, who became the North Carolina Collection's first curator at UNC. The title was supplied by the cataloger. Subjects include librarians in Chapel Hill, the university library and the collection Thornton curated.
Included because: Listed as its creator.
Article by D. A. Yanchisin on Mary Lindsay Thornton and her work with the North Carolina Collection in the library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented as a case history in special librarianship. Reprinted from the Journal of Library History for January 1971 by the School of Library Science at Florida State University.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
Map of Chapel Hill as the town looked from 1875 to 1885, drawn by H. D. Carter in 1934 from details that longtime residents gave Mary L. Thornton. A legend on the reverse identifies the landmarks and buildings shown, the business district among them.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
Chapel Hill as it looked between 1875 and 1885, mapped in 1934 by H.D. Carter from what longtime residents told Mary L. Thornton. Scale 1:500.
Included because: Listed as its creator.
Stacie Lynn Alexander traces the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through the forty years Mary Lindsay Thornton led it, from 1917 to 1958. Submitted in 1993 as a master's paper to the School of Information and Library Science, with a bibliography.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
Working files on Thomas Wolfe kept by successive librarians between 1938 and 2006, numbered 70015 in UNC's North Carolina Collection after a change from CW4 in April 2020. Subjects include a long run of Chapel Hill librarians and Wolfe scholars, among them Mary Lindsay Thornton, Charles E. Rush, Jerrold Orne, William S. Powell, H. G. Jones and Agatha Boyd Adams, with the Thomas Wolfe Society and Asheville history.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
North Carolina Collection administrative files from the university library at Chapel Hill, 1917 to 1972, about 1,000 items in 1.5 linear feet, University Archives 40053. The files cover historical libraries and special collections in North Carolina, library resources, and the history of higher education in the state, with material on William S. Powell (1919-2015) and Mary Lindsay Thornton.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
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Picture: Mary Lindsay Thornton. CC BY-SA 4.0. By Nrcugaunc; via Wikimedia Commons
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