Clark Hultquist and Carey Heatherly Get Caught Reading

Photo and graphics by Joel Bullock

Our latest edition of UM Gets Caught Reading features professors Clark Hultquist and Carey Heatherly. The pair are the authors of Montevallo, which was published last month as part of the Images of America series by Arcadia Publishing. Dr. Hultquist is a Professor of History and chair of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department at the university, while Mr. Heatherly is an Assistant Professor who handles the dual roles of Reference Librarian and University Archivist at Carmichael Library.

We usually ask our Get Caught Reading participants, "How do you use your campus library?" The following is a more detailed explanation of how Heatherly and Hultquist used the library and its collections during the preparation of their book for publication:

Clark Hultquist and Carey Heatherly use Carmichael Library for research purposes. This is best exemplified by the extensive research on both the campus and town history for the book Montevallo. The work is a pictorial history featuring 217 images accompanied by captions and chapter introductions. Almost all the images came from the University of Montevallo, mostly from Carmichael Library’s University Archives and Special Collections. Additionally, the duo spent six months researching each photograph; the people, the buildings, the stories behind each one. A sample of those rich resources include yearbooks from 1907 to the present, the student newspaper Alabamian from 1924 to the present, a collection of area newspaper scrapbooks from 1915 to 1995, and the University’s course catalogs and pamphlets from 1895 to the present.

The authors utilized Carmichael Library’s reference and circulation collections too. Much is owed to the available secondary sources on local history, particularly Eloise Meroney’s Montevallo: the First One-Hundred Years, Lucille Griffith’s Alabama College and White Columns and Red Bricks, and Mary Frances Tipton’s Years Rich and Fruitful. The research conducted at Carmichael has paid dividends beyond the publication of Montevallo as the authors are often asked to speak about local history. Most recently, the two led a tour of downtown and told stories about homes, businesses, churches, and the people who settled, lived, and worked in Montevallo, including notable events such as electricity coming to town in 1912 and the Main Street murder of Walter S. Cary.