The purpose of the NC ECHO portal is to provide a single entry point to explore online the resources of North Carolina's cultural institutions.

Adding a digital collection through the NC ECHO Portal

A digital collection will be linked to the NC ECHO portal if it:

• represents digitized resources in North Carolina’s cultural institutions, or makes available the tools to access resources such as finding aids, catalogs, indexes, or databases;
• makes online resources available at no cost to the public;
• demonstrates commitment to the larger online community by applying NC ECHO’s best practices, standards, and guidelines;
• ensures that institutional materials are in the public domain or cleared for public distribution;
• plans for continued sustainability of the Web site and accuracy of information about collections.

To add a digital collection to the NC ECHO portal, complete the online form.

Ownership and Accuracy of Data

The NC ECHO portal team does not claim ownership of digital collections or finding aids. Ownership remains with the originating site.

Responsibility for accurate data rests with the institution distributing the digital content. The NC ECHO portal team does not warrant the accuracy or currency of information.

Accessibility of Sites

The NC ECHO portal site makes every effort to comply with the accessibility standards developed as part of the Web Access Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/WAI/). While NC ECHO encourages compliance with these standards, the portal team does not guarantee that sites linked by the portal will comply with these or other accessibility standards.

Removal of a Web site from the NC ECHO Portal

The NC ECHO portal team may remove the link to a site for one or more of the following reasons if:

• the site is not consistently and reliably available
• the resources are no longer accessible free of charge
• the site fails to comply with NC ECHO best practices, standards, and guidelines
• there is evidence that site content is inaccurate, out of date, or unreliable
• there is evidence of copyright violation

A request to appeal the removal of a site from the NC ECHO portal can be made using the help form [create form and hypertext it]. Links to Web sites will be reinstated if problems are remedied. In all cases, the NC ECHO portal team will be the final arbiter.

Policy Review

Until a more formal governance structure for the NC ECHO portal is established, this policy will be reviewed by the Access to Special Collections Work Group (NC ECHO Advisory Committee) on an annual basis.