Using a combination of digitized yearbooks, bulletins, newspapers and other resources can help you discover a lot about North Carolina A&T's history remotely. When searching the digital collections keep these tips in mind.
1. Use different versions of a person, organization or a place's name (ex. "James B. Dudley", "J. B. Dudley", "President Dudley", OR "A&T College", "A. and T. College", "Agricultural and Technical College, School of Engineering, "College of Engineering".
2. OCR (optical character recognition), the software used to read text off of scanned items is not perfect, so do not be discouraged if your first searches do not work. OCR can not read special fonts, hand-written signatures, and artistic text styles like those used in ads and posters.
3. Take advantage of advanced search functions like boolean operators "AND" "OR", "NOT", and time or geographic limiters.
4. Use regional and A&T resources to confirm histories found in larger databases.
5. Narrow your search as much as possible for best results. (ex. "A&T" AND "Dudley" VS. "A&T College" AND "President Dudley" AND "administration"
The major digital collections of primary resources and scholarship produced by the N.C. A&T community and maintained by the library, including text, audio, videos and images. Several of these resources are available in their original physical formats, preserved in Bluford Library Archives. New collections are added continually.
Efforts are growing by the F. D. Bluford Library to increase knowledge of A&T's earliest histories. NCpedia articles are one way of reaching this goal.
Below are biographies of A&T faculty and staff who were active from 1896 - 1925
