On Jan. 4, a new window into the Clinton presidency will open at UNC Chapel Hill.

That’s when a trove of source material Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch used to write his soon-to-be-released book on the Clinton presidency will become publicly available at the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-CH.

Branch, a UNC-CH alum, has a long relationship with the historical collection. The source materials — interviews, transcriptions, correspondence — that led to his prize-winning writings on Martin Luther King, Jr., are already in the university’s possession. Now, so too are the Clinton records.

“[Historians are] going to be looking at the first-hand reflections of a seasoned and wise historian on what was going on then. I think that's worth something,” said Tim West, the Southern Historical Collection’s curator. “It’s different from what President Clinton was saying himself. It's not just a sort of verbatim record that he was making of what he remembers hearing Clinton say, but also what he noticed happening around the White House. There's going to be interesting stuff.”

Ever wonder what Albert Einstein's autograph looks like? How about Thomas Jefferson's? George Washington?

An upcoming event at UNC Chapel Hill's Wilson Library may satisfy your curiosity. The university is digging out some of its most interesting historical pieces from its rare collections for a quick viewing Feb. 17.

It's called "Open Stacks: Behind the Scenes in the Southern Historical Collection, Southern Folklife Collection and the University Archives of Wilson LIbrary." If you go, you'll get a guided tour by a member of the collections staff.

The event runs from 5 to 7 p.m. and is on the fourth floor of Wilson Library. I asked Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist for the Southern Historical Collection, for some details. Click "Read More" to read what he had to say.