North Carolina ECHO, Exploring Cultural Heritage Online

If you have questions about how to care for, store, and display objects in your collection, then you don't want to miss the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies' spring Hometown History workshop. Barbara Rowe, Curator of the Cape Fear Museum, will discuss basic guidelines for taking care of a variety of objects, including costumes, textiles, metals, wood, furniture, ceramics, glass, photographs, and paper. She will discuss critical issues one should understand about an object's medium (fiber, wood, metal, etc.) as well as storage techniques and ideas. The Federation's workshop will also include a presentation by Dr. Shelly Crisp, Executive Director of the North Carolina Humanities Council. Dr. Crisp will discuss the range of grants the Humanities Council offers to help non-profits develop humanities programming. In addition, she will talk about how museums and historic sites can apply to the Humanities Council to host a traveling Smithsonian exhibit.

Friday, May 9, 2008
Old Burke County Courthouse, Morganton, NC
Directions in MS Word (32.5 KB) or view a map in MapQuest.

Registration:
The schedule and registration form is available in Adobe PDF (58.6 KB) format.

Application deadline is one week prior to each workshop.

LSTA NC ECHO Digitization Grants

The LSTA NC ECHO Digitization Grant Program supports digitization activities for libraries throughout the state of North Carolina. Libraries are encouraged to collaborate with other libraries or non-library cultural heritage institutions (archives, museums, historic sites, etc.). Single institutions seeking grant funds can seek up to $75,000 per year, and institutions engaging in collaborative projects can seek up to $150,000 per year. Digitization grants are repeatable for a maximum of 3 years.

For a complete overview of the LSTA NC ECHO Digitization Grant Program, refer to our Grant Program web page.

Featured Site

Digital Forsyth

Digital Forsyth: http://www.digitalforsyth.org

Digital Forsyth is the definitive online collection of historical photographs of Forsyth County, NC. Digital Forsyth is a grant-funded multi-year digitization project among Forsyth County Public Library, Winston-Salem State University's C.G. O'Kelly Library, and Wake Forest University's Z. Smith Reynolds Library and Coy C. Carpenter Medical Library. The goal, over the course of three years, is to scan and post online about 12,000 images depicting Forsyth County’s cultural history. Visitors to the Web site can see photos dating back more than 100 years, ranging from scenes of daily life to visits by renowned political leaders and celebrities. Viewers can search for items of interest by decade or from categories such as agriculture, business, institutions, events, people, places or structures.

NC ECHO Newsletter

The Summer 2007 issue of the NC ECHO Newsletter is now available.
(Adobe Acrobat format, 995K)

Previous issues of the newsletter are also available.

North Carolina ECHO, Exploring Cultural Heritage Online, http://www.ncecho.org, is the World Wide Web doorway to the special collections of North Carolina's libraries, archives, museums, and historic sites.

The NC ECHO project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources (a state agency). Lisbeth C. Evans, Secretary, www.ncculture.com.

This innovative and collaborative project seeks to build a statewide framework for digitization in order to facilitate deep, wide, and comprehensive access to the holdings of North Carolina's cultural institutions. NC ECHO is sponsored by the State Library of North Carolina in cooperation with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Questions and comments may be directed to the NC ECHO staff.