Come and listen to the salty voices of men and women who tell the stories of yesterday and today, and their hopes for days to come. Or better yet, come and join our efforts in collecting this important stories from young and old alike.
The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center is honored to be home to the Cape Lookout Reading Room – dedicated to the memories of Capt. Josiah Bailey and Les & Sallie Moore. This research room will be a fitting tribute to the work of all three individuals who worked tirelessly in gathering the history, artifacts and stories of Ca’e Banks and her people.
The Cape Lookout Reading Room will serve as a public archive for oral histories that have been collected through this institution and partnering agencies relating to the cultural traditions, natural history and people of coastal North Carolina. In the Cape Lookout Reading Room visitors, students and researchers will have direct access to oral history recordings and transcripts that have been gathered over the past 25 years from partnering agencies such as Cape Lookout National Seashore, Outer Banks History Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Southern Oral History Program and other regional repositories for oral history research.
This archive reading room adjoining the library was envisioned from the beginning of the museum’s development as a haven for community and scholarly work, oral histories, photographs and publications relating to the Core Sound region and the rural coastal communities of North Carolina. The plan will also provide data files of historic documents, reference materials, maps, charts and other related research in one location where up-to-date audio and visual equipment will be available for public use.
Our goal is to provide the best possible utilization of past and present community photos, oral histories and documentation (film, audio recordings, current events) for the local community and visitors as the museum shares the culture, traditions, and living history of the surrounding communities with students, writers, researchers and new residents from around the world.
We believe with the strong partnerships and wide-spread support we have for developing this public archive, this project will gr It is vital that we bring together all the research materials gathered both specifically for the exhibit design and those materials already archived at both the CSWM&HC and the Cape Lookout NPS to become more accessible to the academic world. Also, as this region becomes more populated and as more cultural-heritage travelers find this area, more user-friendly access to historical data is needed.
The museum's vision for an Archive Reading room has been confirmed over and over as writers and researchers are constantly coming to our staff for information on area topics of waterfowling, boatbuilding, commercial fishing and other traditions.
A growing interest in the natural sciences will also be addressed with the realization of climate change and its impending effects on local culture and the future. Eastern North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine region (of which Core Sound is a part) has been identified as one of the top three locations in the nation (behind the Mississippi Delta region of Louisiana and the Everglades region of Florida) to be impacted by this sea-level rise now forecasted for the next 100 years.
It is important to the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, Cape Lookout National Seashore and to the academic community that these rich cultural resources and the scientific data be not only conserved and preserved, but also accessible to the growing interest in the history, culture and ecology of this region. Work on the gathering of information for the exhibit plan has involved partners from the NC Arts Council, NOAA’s Preserve American Initiative, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, the Conservation Fund’s Resourceful Communities Program, NC Humanities Council, NC State University, NC Folklife Institute, UNC-Chapel Hill and a broad spectrum of local community members.
In 2007, the State of North Carolina committed ongoing support to the CSWM&HC through a five-year grant from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission and inclusion of the CSWM&HC into the Grassroots Science Museum Collaborative. Both of these partnerships will further strengthen the Core Sound Museum’s role as an interpretive center and community archive
The Cape Lookout Reading Room will also be home to continued oral history projects through community historian training programs, local school projects, undergraduate and graduate partnerships with regional universities and expanded museum programming.
The museum’s original vision for an Archive Reading room has been confirmed over and over as writers and researchers are constantly coming to our staff for research on area history, culture and reference materials relating to current issues. It is important to the museum and to the academic community that the rich cultural resources be not only conserved and preserved, but also accessible to the growing interest in the history and culture of this region.