About North Carolina ECHO

NC ECHO Staff
Peter Hymas, Project Librarian (919) 807-7427
email: peter.hymas@ncmail.net
Hilary Perez, Project Archivist (919) 807-7418
email: hilary.perez@ncmail.net
Matt Vernon, Project Assistant (919) 807-7422
email: matt.vernon@ncmail.net
Kathy Wisser, Metadata Coordinator (919) 843-1178
email: kwisser@unc.edu

North Carolina ECHO, Exploring Cultural Heritage Online, is the World Wide Web's doorway to the special collections of North Carolina's libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and other cultural institutions. It is an evolving statewide, collaborative access to special collections and digitization project. Funded through a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant and managed by the State Library of North Carolina, this innovative project was one of the first in the nation to build a statewide framework for digitization and addresses a full-range of digitization needs of the state's cultural collecting agencies (libraries, archives, and museums).

With North Carolina ECHO, you can:

• Search an online directory of the cultural repositories of the state.
• Explore online resources created by those institutions.
• Discover the outstanding research opportunities and unique collections available in North Carolina.

The NC ECHO vision is that "All of North Carolina's cultural institutions work together to make the state's unique cultural and historical resources accessible for the education and enjoyment of people of all ages in the state, nation, and the world."

Background

The North Carolina State Library Commission adopted "Building Libraries--A Plan for Library Cooperation" on June 14, 1999. As a part of that plan, the Commission stated its intent to increase Internet access to the state's "specialized resources." The Commission created the Access to Special Collections Working Group (ASCWG) to meet this goal. Duke University and the State Library of North Carolina applied for and received a federal LSTA grant to fund that group's operation. ASCWG has representatives from public and private academic libraries, public libraries, archives, private museums and public museums.

In March 2000, seeking greater input from their colleagues, ASCWG called a conference of North Carolina cultural heritage caretakers and stakeholders who met for two days in High Point, N.C. Following a review of other statewide initiatives, this group of approximately 100 persons from across the state directed ASCWG to create a Web portal to organize and present the digital resources already created by North Carolina's cultural agencies. This "High Point Group," named for their initial meeting location, also asked ASCWG to gather information about North Carolina's cultural heritage community via a statewide survey and create a long-term vision and plan for the project, including the identification of standards for participating agencies to follow, and the development of a Web portal.

In April 2001, the High Point Group reconvened to review the first survey results, hear from representatives of the state's major digitization programs, and unveil the NC ECHO Web portal. This group also endorsed the project's "Guidelines for Digitization" and began planning how best to implement it locally.

Major Components of the Project

North Carolina was one of the first states to build a statewide framework for digitization. Taken together, this framework comprises NC ECHO and includes:

• establishment of an NC ECHO Web portal, which provides information on over 850 North Carolina cultural repositories (in a never-before-compiled directory) while allowing users to search any of these institutions' online resources from one Web site (collection development criteria at http://www.ncecho.org/colldev.asp);
• identification of standards and best practices for digitization, the compilation of which involved the work of an advisory editorial board of 50 librarians, archivists, and museum professionals from across the state (the most recent edition is available at http://www.ncecho.org/Guide/toc.htm);
• creation of a two-tiered continuing education program to teach traditional special collection skills and digitization (in process);
• development of a statewide needs assessment (a comprehensive, on-site interview and photographic survey), which also provides opportunities for informal consulting on a wide range of special collections activities through site visits, and cross-repository, community-building "Survey Summary Meetings" held locally;
• formation of a digitization grant program that supports collaborative digitization projects among the state's libraries and partner cultural institutions and creates a more in-depth and wider assortment of online resources for the use of the public (guidelines for the NC ECHO Grant Program are at http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/lsta/lsta.htm); and
• development of a student interface to the ECHO Web portal along with supporting curricular materials (in the planning stage).

NC ECHO Partners

Few other states have attempted to be as inclusive in their statewide digitization plans as has North Carolina. With guiding principles suggested and agreed upon by "the High Point Group" (approximately 100 representatives from the state's cultural collecting community) and with oversight from the NC ECHO Advisory Committee (formerly known as ASCWG, composed of individuals representing the state's archives, libraries and museums), NC ECHO is open to any of the state's cultural institutions which "maintain a permanent, non-living collection of unique materials held for research and/or exhibit purposes and are open for the use of the public." NC ECHO partners stretch 888 miles from the West's Museum of the Cherokee in Murphy, NC to the East's Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo. They include the small, volunteer-run community crossroads museums (open during special events only), as well as nationally recognized research institutions. Online resources mounted by these institutions and brought together at the NC ECHO site currently number over 200 "collections," everything from Documenting the American South's 1000 full-text works at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to Rowan Public Library's oral history audio clip of the first African-American mayor of Salisbury.

Emphasizing Collaboration

In addition to reaching out to a wide assortment of institutions, NC ECHO also has made effective use of its resources by requiring full-cycle grant matching funds to leverage local resources and by bringing cultural institutions together to build a centralized set of tools (templates, portal, harvesting software, training activities, specialized equipment) that all may share, rather than having the major institutions build their own separately (and in all probability, leaving the smaller institutions to do without). The grant program also promotes collaborative grant projects, thereby encouraging local institutions to share their resources. For example, collaborative projects are now underway between the library at UNC-Charlotte and the Levine Museum of the New South; between Craven-Pamlico-Carteret Regional Library and Tryon Palace Historic Sites and Gardens; and UNC-Wilmington's library and the Cape Fear Museum. A summary of these projects and others may be found at http://www.ncecho.org/onlineprojects.asp.

NC ECHO encourages participation by anyone who supports our vision. Join the NC ECHO discussion list and get involved!

Conclusion

NC ECHO opens the door on the treasures of the state that are, for the most part, hidden in the storage rooms and stacks of libraries, archives, and museums. It aids the researcher in making connections between collections that may not have been evident before, and it breaks down the somewhat artificial barriers that exist between cultural collecting agencies. In just one example, North Carolina State University Libraries, the Biltmore Estate Company, and the Forest History Society have joined forces to provide online access to their materials regarding the history of forestry, a science born in North Carolina. Each of these institution's holdings on the subject are significant, but taken together they provide a comprehensive story of the industry from its first days. Here are materials for academic researchers, elementary school students, local historians and others interested in forest history, ecology, vernacular architecture, or rural economic development. Many of the other online collections are expected to have an equally wide range of potential interest.

NC ECHO trains the digitizers, provides the tools that they require, identifies the best practices for the use of those tools, and then helps the researcher use the individual resources by bringing them together in one Web portal. North Carolina ECHO provides one future for our past, an especially exciting future, as more and more of us begin Exploring Cultural Heritage Online.

Logos For Your Web Site

Several NC ECHO logos of different sizes are available for use on web pages.