Libraries, museums and media
The Orange County Public Library began in Hillsborough's Confederate Memorial Library, a stone building on Churton Street whose cornerstone was laid in 1934, and moved in 1981 to the former Hillsborough High School on West Tryon Street. Its 23,500-square-foot Main Library opened at 137 West Margaret Lane in 2010, and branches have served Carrboro since 1995.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People named in events about this site, ordered by number of mentions. Each example links to an entry with a source citation.
Books, articles, records, and images about Orange County Public Library. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
Bonnie S. Brzozowski's 2007 survey of people using the public computers at Orange County Public Library. The study examines internet use and the digital divide in the county's libraries.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A 2005 look at the joint library shared by the Carrboro Branch Library and the McDougle Schools media center, written ten years after the two operations were combined. It examines a shared public library and school facility in North Carolina.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Emily M. Weiss's 2005 case study of how the Carrboro Cybrary came to be, following the part local government played in creating it. Topics include library and community relations in North Carolina and the dealings of public libraries with local government. Carrboro and its library service are the single setting, which makes the paper a local administrative history.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A 1999 study of library service in Orange County, built on a survey of county residents. Subjects include the Orange County Public Library together with public libraries and community relations in North Carolina. What it records is how the county library system was used and viewed at the end of the 1990s.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Self-study and community analysis prepared by the Hyconeechee Regional Library in 1977, the regional system then serving public libraries in Caswell, Orange and Person counties. It is an evaluation of public library service in each of the three counties, with attention to the communities served. 104 leaves with charts, issued by the library itself.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Front of the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough, photographed on 31 July 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Orange County Public Library van, painted with the words 'Treasure Chest', in a North Carolina ECHO photograph of 31 July 2002 from Hillsborough.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Artwork and displays from summer library programs in the lobby of the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough, photographed for North Carolina ECHO on 31 July 2002.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
William Joseph Thomas on the joint-use library in Carrboro shared by the Orange County Public Library and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, which had been open for some twenty years when he wrote in 2015.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Orange County Library seen from the front, in one undated exterior photograph. Part of the Chapel Hill Government binder in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Newsletter of the Friends of the Carrboro Branch Library, issued in volumes with illustrations at 28 centimeters. Topics include the Friends group itself and public libraries in Carrboro, so the run follows the branch, its supporters and the programs they paid for. Published by the Carrboro Branch Library, with no beginning date recorded.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
A magazine made by the Teen Advisory Board at the main library of the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough, printing writing and artwork by county teenagers. It is a periodical under libraries and teenagers in Orange County, with young adult literature among the subjects. A record of what the library's teen program produced and of what its writers were reading.
Included because: Published by or for this institution.
Not about Orange County Public Library alone: the architectural surveys that cover its town or the county, and maps drawn while it stood. Several of the surveys can be read free online at NC Digital Collections.
Survey of Hillsborough's historic buildings by Heather Wagner Slane of hmwPreservation, completed in September 2017. The 40-page report covers the town's architecture and history with color illustrations and maps.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Cheryl Davis Warren's 2005 study of history and sense of place in Hillsborough, 216 leaves with illustrations, maps and a bibliography. Written as human geography, it treats the town's past alongside its social conditions and the ways residents understand where they live.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Fire insurance map of Hillsborough, spelled Hillsboro, drawn by the Sanborn Map Company in January 1905 on two sheets, from the Sanborn Maps collection.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Bird's-eye view of Hillsborough looking east, with houses and industrial buildings, on a postcard published by A. C. Bosselman & Co. of New York about 1905 to 1915. Card number 11116.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
These books don’t necessarily mention Orange County Public Library, but they cover where it stands, its kind of building and the land, family and burial records behind it, and they are where a search for a place like this usually goes next. All are at OCPL, most in the Wall Collection.
A 1982 revision of Allen Alexander Lloyd's history of Hillsborough, now written with Pauline O. Lloyd and carried forward from the town's founding in 1754 to 1982. Published in Hillsborough by A. A. Lloyd, 310 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
J. Chris Holaday's Images of America volume on Hillsborough (Arcadia, 2002), built mostly from photographs and postcards. Chapters cover homes, churches and schools, business and industry, local people, scenes around town, and sports, entertainment and events.
Elizabeth Shreve Ryan's combined histories and tour guides for Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the three towns of Orange County, with the University of North Carolina treated alongside Chapel Hill. Each town gets a narrative history and a tour of its streets and buildings. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2004, 369 pages with illustrations and maps.
Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern's field guide to the historic buildings of the North Carolina Piedmont, arranged county by county from Wake and Franklin in the east to Mecklenburg and Gaston in the west. The Orange County section takes in Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro along with the rural county, with entries on individual buildings and maps for finding them. Published 2003, 596 pages with illustrations and maps.
An inventory of the buildings in the Hillsborough Historic District, dated 2006. It concerns historic buildings and the buildings and structures of Hillsborough. Useful for anyone checking a particular property in the town's historic district.
Susan McArtor Bellinger's photographic survey of the buildings in the Hillsborough Historic District put up before 1950, self-published in Hillsborough in 1991. Arranged as a guidebook, it records houses and other structures in photographs. 142 pages with illustrations.
Lucile Noell Dula's guidebook to Hillsborough and its historic buildings, published by Pelican in 1989. It pairs a tour of the town with notes on its history, in 128 illustrated pages with a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Stewart E. Dunaway worked through Hillsborough, N.C., lot by lot, giving each town lot a synopsis of its history, a plat showing where it sits and transcripts of the deeds he could locate for it. The second issue runs to 720 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2015 addendum to his history of Hillsborough's town lots, adding deed records arranged by lot number and further town history, with the expansion of the 1890s covered for the first time. Self-published in North Carolina as version 1.0, 446 pages with illustrations, facsimiles and maps. Topics include deeds, court records, land titles and real property in Hillsborough.
An index to the town lots of Hillsborough, Orange County, compiled in 1982 as a guide to the deeds and court records that trace each lot's ownership.
Sources cited in this site’s history, National Register documents, and places to get research help. Research guide: Investigate a school or community institution.
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