It’s DigitalNC.org’s 10th birthday! Though we had hoped to be in the office celebrating, we’re still taking time to look back at years of hard work and the collaborative spirit that makes the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC) what it is!
To date, NCDHC has partnered with 273 libraries, museums, alumni associations, archives, and historic sites in 98 of North Carolina’s 100 counties and we’re growing all the time. Our website currently includes 4.2 million images and files. We share this accomplishment with every institution we’ve worked with. We’d never have gotten to 10 years without staff (permanent, temporary, and student!), our partners, or the network of colleagues all over North Carolina who have encouraged, advised, and supported our work.
As we approached our anniversary, we realized that our website lacked a synopsis of how NCDHC came to be, and our history. So read on for a brief look at how we got started and our major milestones.
Our History
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center was one outcome of a comprehensive effort by the state’s Department of Cultural Resources (now the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources) to survey and get a broad overview of the status of North Carolina cultural heritage institutions. That effort was entitled NC ECHO (North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) and was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (which also supports us – thanks IMLS). A major goal of NC ECHO was a multi-year needs assessment. NC ECHO staff visited hundreds of cultural heritage institutions throughout the state to collect data and interview curators, librarians, volunteers, archivists, and more. Many of our partners still remember their visits!
Data collected at these site visits was combined with survey responses to reveal a “state of the state,” summarized in a 2010 report, cover pictured at right. The assessment revealed a lot but, specific to digitization, staff found that nearly three-quarters of the 761 institutions who completed the survey had no digitization experience or capacity. Members of the Department of Cultural Resources (which includes the State Library, State Archives, and multiple museums and historic sites) began brainstorming with other area institutions about a way to help efficiently and effectively provide digitization opportunities. While the NC ECHO project offered digitization grants, workshops, and best practices, an idea emerged of a centralized entity that could assist institutions that didn’t have the capacity to do the work in house. The State Library of North Carolina and UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries joined together to create such an entity: the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. The Center would be located in Chapel Hill, taking advantage of its central location and the digitization equipment and expertise already available in Wilson Special Collections Library. The State Library would provide funding, guidance, and ongoing promotion and support of the Center’s services.
At its beginning, the Center’s staff digitized small collections of college yearbooks, needlework samplers, postcards, and photographs and made them available through DigitalNC.org. They went to speak with organizations interested in becoming partners, and began taking projects for digitization. Here’s a list of NCDHC’s earliest partners, who came on board during late 2009 and 2010.
Though we’re not positive of the exact date, we believe DigitalNC.org launched on or near May 12, 2010. Here’s a look at that original site!
In 2011, word about the Center spread. Staff started responding to demand from partners, incorporating newspaper digitization. In late 2012, also in response to popular demand, the Center began digitizing high school yearbooks. Yearbooks and newspapers are some of the most viewed items on DigitalNC, and they remain a significant portion of our work to this day.
In 2013, NCDHC joined the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) as North Carolina’s “service hub.” The DPLA collects information from digitized collections all over the nation and provides it together in one searchable interface at dp.la. Because of our participation, users can browse and search for collections from North Carolina alongside items from institutions around the country.
Throughout the years, we’ve tried to expand services to fit our partners’ goals. In 2015, we trialed an audiovisual digitization project that incorporated the first films into DigitalNC. Today, we partner with the Southern Folklife Collection at Wilson Special Collections Library to provide audio digitization on an ongoing basis. In 2016, we added a new partner category – alumni associations – to support more digitization of African American high school yearbooks and memorabilia. The following year, we announced a focus on digitization of items documenting underrepresented communities. We also started going on the road with our scanners! For institutions that don’t have the staff time or resources to travel to Chapel Hill, we offer to come for a day or two and scan on site.
2018 and 2019 saw several major milestones. We were nationally recognized as an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal finalist, and we began a major software migration. Both were a tribute to the size and extent of our operation, though in different ways. As we’ve approached our 10th anniversary we’ve focused on working with partners in all 100 of North Carolina’s counties. Whether you’re rural or metropolitan, we believe your history is important and should be shared online.
One of the ways we’re commemorating this anniversary is to ask our partners and stakeholders how they think we’ve impacted them and their audiences. Join us here on the blog in the second half of 2020 as we share these brief interviews, reflect, and celebrate. Thank you for reading, enjoy the site, and here’s to another 10 years of making North Carolina’s cultural heritage accessible online!
We love being sent or just stumbling upon, projects on the web that utilize materials digitized through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. We thought since they have done such a great job highlighting us, it’d only be fair to turn around and highlight a few we’ve found recently.
1 Adams Alley, a house torn down during Urban Renewal in Durham. Adams Alley no longer exists as an address.
Today’s focus is on a website that’s associated with larger project at Duke called Bull City 150. Durham celebrates it’s 150th anniversary this month, so it feels appropriate to highlight this project in April. According to the website, “the mission of Bull City 150 is to invite Durhamites to reckon with the racial and economic injustices of the past 150 years and commit to building a more equitable future.” The project does this through a variety of public history methods, including the associated website that features several videos put together by students in Documentary Studies classes at Duke. Two of those videos, one on the important role of the Carolina Times and its’ long time editor, Louis Austin in Durham’s Black community, and one on the destruction of Hayti in Durham when the Durham Freeway, Hwy 147, was built, feature materials digitized by DigitalNC. We have the full run of the Carolina Times available here and many photographs and property surveys digitized for the Durham Urban Renewal Collection from our partner Durham County Library, are featured in the Hayti video.
If you have a particular project or know of one that has utilized materials from DigitalNC, we’d love to hear about it! Contact us via email or in the comments below and we’ll check out. To see past highlighted projects, visit past posts here.
More additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, provided by our partner, the Durham County Library, are now online at DigitalNC. This collection of funeral programs and obituaries of African American residents of Durham was compiled by R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015), a historian with an extensive knowledge of Durham, North Carolina.
This collection is arranged alphabetically by the last names of the individuals included. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames Raines through Sykes. The funeral programs are an excellent source for genealogical research, and often include details such as birth and death dates, names of family members, locations lived, and parts of an individual’s life story. We are always in the process of digitizing this collection, so please check back for more entries in the coming months.
To take a look at what we have digitized so far from the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, please visit the collection’s exhibit page. Information about the collection is also available in the finding aid on Durham County Library’s website.
To see more materials from Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page, or take a look at their website.
New additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, provided by our partner, Durham County Library, are now online at DigitalNC. This collection of funeral programs and obituaries of African American residents of Durham was compiled by R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015), a historian with an extensive knowledge of Durham, North Carolina.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by the last names of individuals. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames Mabry through Quiett. The funeral programs and obituaries are an excellent genealogical source and often include biographical details like birth and death dates, names of family members, locations lived, and aspects of an individual’s life story. We will continue to digitize this collection, so please check back for more entries in the coming months.
To take a look at what we have digitized so far of the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, please visit the collection’s exhibit page. Information about the collection is also available in the finding aid on Durham County Library’s website.
To see more materials from Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page, or take a look at their website.
New additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, provided by our partner, Durham County Library, are now online. This collection of funeral programs and obituaries of African American Durham residents was compiled by R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015), a historian with an extensive knowledge of Durham, North Carolina.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by last names of individuals. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames Gaddy through Kearny. The funeral programs and obituaries are an excellent genealogical source and often include biographical details like birth and death dates, names of family members, locations lived, and aspects of an individual’s life story. We will continue to digitize this collection, so check back for more additions in the coming months.
To take a look at what we have digitized so far of the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, please visit the collection’s exhibit page. Information about the collection is also available in the finding aid on Durham County Library’s website.
To see more materials from Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page, or take a look at their website.
An image from the funeral program of Margaret Rozzetta Stephens Fuller
More funeral programs and obituaries from Durham County Library are now online. These are part of the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection and cover funerals in and around Durham County from 1934-2013. R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015) was a Durham historian and active community member who collected the stories of African-American Durham residents via obituaries and funeral programs.
The newly digitized additions cover the last names Cobb through Furtick. These join the first batch from this collection which cover the names Adams through Coachman. The obituaries and funeral programs are fully text searchable, and are a great source of genealogical information. Birth and death dates, names of family members, and biographical information are often included.
You can browse or search the digitized items in the collection by visiting the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection exhibit page on DigitalNC. More information is also available through the collection’s finding aid on the Durham County Library’s website.
To learn more about Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page or take a look at their website.
First page of the March 1979 issue of The Informer newsletter.
The Digital Heritage Center has worked with over 150 libraries throughout North Carolina. It’s no surprise that DigitalNC.org boasts a good number of items that document the history of libraries in the state, including scrapbooks and photos.*
For many years libraries were purposefully segregated, with branches tacitly or overtly meant to serve an African American neighborhood or community. The Richard B. Harrison Library in Raleigh is an example of a library that was a true social force, due to the hard work and influence of librarian Mollie Huston Lee. I thought of Ms. Lee recently. I was doing some work in our scrapbook collection, when I came upon an interesting newsletter tucked into one of the Irwin Holmes scrapbooks from the Durham County Library.
Titled “The Informer,” the newsletter’s tagline is: “For Recruitment of Minority Librarians” and appears to have been published first out of Raleigh and then out of Fort Valley, Georgia. There are two (possibly two and a half) issues in the scrapbook: one dating from March 1979 (pictured at right) and the second from September 1983. The issues of The Informer in our collection give biographies and moving tributes to African American librarians, such as Ann M. Jenkins of NCCU and Edna “Pinky” Penolya Mcaden King Watkins, an NCCU graduate who worked in libraries around the country. They also list positions available in North Carolina and around the country. The Informer publisher, IESMP or “Information Exchange System for Minority Personnel,” sold a number of other publications that offered to help librarians find jobs at institutions friendly to hiring minorities.
Dr. Dorothy May Haith was The Informer’s editor and possibly publisher, and she has had a lifelong passion for improving the profession and her community. A Shaw University and North Carolina Central University alum (she also holds degrees from Indiana University), Haith led the library at Bennett College, and also at Howard University. She has a number of publications to her name, has served on professional boards, and has given back to educational institutions by endowing scholarships. The Spring 2011 issue of Windows, published by the University Library at UNC Chapel Hill, describes a gift made to Wilson Library by Haith to honor those she felt encouraged her education (we call Wilson Library our home).
Dorothy Haith’s high school yearbook photo from Booker T. Washington High in Reidsville, N.C.
Through The Informer, Haith was building a network for minority librarians through the 1970s and 1980s, offering them professional resources and personal information about their peers. Though Googling gives most of us this benefit now (as it did for me when trying to find out more about Haith), before the internet, this was a true labor and a valuable service.
Recruitment of minorities and increasing diversity continues to be a great need. What many patrons may not realize is that libraries strive to be some of the most inclusive, safe spaces in the country. Many build towards that goal in numerous ways: through concerted efforts to recruit a diverse workforce, through selection of an inclusive and various group of materials for collections, and through ensuring libraries are safe for ALL patrons. In fact, the American Library Association, the national professional organization for librarians, reinforces these goals through a code of ethics, professional development, and scholarships. As a profession, we have a long way to go, but these steps get us closer.
At DigitalNC, we hope to identify and help share more collections from our partners related to North Carolina’s minority populations in the coming year. If you work at a library or other cultural heritage institution and have collections that fit this category that you’d like to share online, we’re eager to hear from you.
Here on our blog, we occasionally feature “matchups” that showcase relationships between different items in our collection. Today’s matchup? An advertisement from The Carolina Times and some photographs from the Durham Urban Renewal Records of the Durham County Library.
The Durham Urban Renewal Records collection on DigitalNC, from the Durham County Library, contains thousands of photographs and appraisal records documenting efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to combat what was seen as “urban blight” in several downtown neighborhoods. Recently, while browsing The Carolina Times, a Durham newspaper, one of our staff members noticed an advertisement for Houses for Rent on page 3 of the November 16, 1940 issue. It turns out several of these properties are pictured among the Records collection.
While we think these photos were taken over 20 years after the advertisement, the property appraisals in the Records collection let us know that the houses were old enough to have been the ones advertised for rent in 1940. The appraisal for 1109 Fayetteville Street even has the note: “House well located to rent.” The advertisement gives us the opportunity to compare the rental prices in 1940 with those in 1962 when the appraisals took place. Here’s a comparison of the rental prices:
Property
Weekly Rent, 1940
Weekly Rent, 1962
1109 Fayetteville Street
$1.50
$8.00
508 Ramsey Street
$3.50
$13.00
211 Umstead Street
$3.00 or $3.50
$9.50 to $12.50
711 Willard Street
$3.00
$5.00 to $9.00
After the federal Housing Act of 1954, the North Carolina Division of Community Planning set about examining and appraising many urban communities in North Carolina. Although this sort of scrutiny was common through the 70s, there are few areas that acted on perceived “urban blight” as drastically as Durham did. The 1940 advertisement is interesting for what small bit it tells us about the community but also bittersweet as these houses were all demolished when local government chose to repurpose the land occupied by the African American community known as Hayti. You can read more about Hayti on LearnNC. In addition, the Endangered Durham website has some supplemental information on 1109 Fayetteville Street, as well as additional photos of the area in more recent times.
The Carolina Times, a weekly paper based in Durham, was edited and published throughout this period by Louis Austin. The paper covered and addressed the African American community in Durham and throughout the state. Austin was a tireless crusader for racial equality and The Carolina Times was a forceful advocate for civil rights. The paper was an important voice for African Americans who were too often either misrepresented or ignored in other media outlets.
These issues were digitized and published at the suggestion of the Durham County Library.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
It’s DigitalNC.org’s 10th birthday! Though we had hoped to be in the office celebrating, we’re still taking time to look back at years of hard work and the collaborative spirit that makes the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC) what it is!
Data collected at these site visits was combined with survey responses to reveal a “state of the state,” summarized in a 2010 report, cover pictured at right. The assessment revealed a lot but, specific to digitization, staff found that nearly three-quarters of the 761 institutions who completed the survey had no digitization experience or capacity. Members of the Department of Cultural Resources (which includes the State Library, State Archives, and multiple museums and historic sites) began brainstorming with other area institutions about a way to help efficiently and effectively provide digitization opportunities. While the NC ECHO project offered digitization grants, workshops, and best practices, an idea emerged of a centralized entity that could assist institutions that didn’t have the capacity to do the work in house. The State Library of North Carolina and UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries joined together to create such an entity: the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. The Center would be located in Chapel Hill, taking advantage of its central location and the digitization equipment and expertise already available in Wilson Special Collections Library. The State Library would provide funding, guidance, and ongoing promotion and support of the Center’s services.
2018 and 2019 saw several major milestones. We were nationally recognized as an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal finalist, and we began a major software migration. Both were a tribute to the size and extent of our operation, though in different ways. As we’ve approached our 10th anniversary we’ve focused on working with partners in all 100 of North Carolina’s counties. Whether you’re rural or metropolitan, we believe your history is important and should be shared online.
This collection is arranged alphabetically by the last names of the individuals included. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames 
