���˶���

SALISBURY, MD---Salisbury University’s Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture continues to make its resources available in online formats during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nabb Center staff members Ian Post, Jen Piegols and Melinda McPeek have been working to make the historical items accessible.

McPeek, curator of exhibits and engagement, has adapted two of the center’s exhibits from this spring available in a virtual format. The exhibits “Friends and Rivals: Baseball on Delmarva” and “Eastern Shore Pastime: 100 Years of Baseball” were part of a larger National Endowment for the Humanities Heritage Grant project to create a digital archive of materials related to Eastern Shore baseball. The full archive is .

The site continues to be updated with more items that come in. As part of the online exhibit, visitors may submit their favorite baseball memories, which will be added to the center’s .��

Piegols, University archivist and special collections librarian, has been researching how previous medical outbreaks affected campus by reviewing versions of the Holly Leaf, the student newspaper from 1926-70, and the SSC Informer, the student paper from 1971-73.

She has discovered the most information in her research on the polio epidemic of the 1950s and the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s. Her findings have included a January 1950 Holly Leaf story about Guy Whidden, a marathon runner at then-Salisbury State Teachers College, who took part in the local 15-mile March of Dimes Polio Run, apparently running against his doctor's wishes, as he was a 26-year-old "battle-scarred paratrooper of World War II."

Post, local history archivist, has worked on a number of projects, including some that can help those isolated at home in need of some entertainment. A few of the fun projects he has curated include digital jigsaw puzzles, which may be accessed , and coloring books, available for , all featuring items from the Nabb Center’s holdings.

Among some of the most recent collections added to the center’s archive are more than 1,300 pages of letters selected from the Bayly Family Papers that are the center of a crowdsourcing transcription process. The letters include information about the Cambridge, MD-based family at the time of the Civil War.

The staff is regularly adding new collections to its archives, .

With the Patricia A. Guerrieri Academic Commons (GAC), home to the Nabb Center, currently closed, staff and students who normally work at its circulation desk also are contributing to the virtual efforts.

Many are assisting with transcriptions of digitized collections including letters and diaries from World War II, and ledgers from the Ocean City Lifesaving Station, Crisfield Customs House and area churches. They also are transcribing oral history interviews, including some about desegregation in Wicomico County and others about Delmarva folklife.

The center’s staff continues to digitize content and create new ways for those at home to discover the history of the Eastern Shore. To keep up with the latest efforts, visit the Nabb Center’s or .

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the Nabb Center website.