NEWSLETTER December 2005
HELLO ALL,
This belated newsletter is coming on the heels of the holidays, but I want to wrap up the first half of our grant year before we get too far into the official New Year.
DECEMBER MEETING
As most of you know, we hosted a full-day meeting on December 7th for our Partners and Advisors. The Advisory Group attended a morning session and luncheon during which we welcomed two new members. Susan Leveille, proprietor of the Oaks Gallery in Dillsboro, is also a weaver and the grand niece of Lucy Morgan, leader of what became known as the Penland School of Crafts. Vicki Ledford is the Executive Director of Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, an artist cooperative formed in 1946 for the benefit of promoting and preserving the handcraft and skills of the Cherokee community. Also attending the meeting was Christian Dwight, a Public History graduate student from WCU’s History Dept., who has been awarded an assistantship to work on the project. We are pleased to have all on board and look forward to their insight as we move through the next year of the project.
To recap the meeting briefly, Bil explained that the university hired a firm to work on the WCU website. Our grant includes funds for a web consultant and we will be utilizing the talents of this firm as we move through prototyping the Craft Revival site. Bil also reminded everyone of the importance of the upcoming LSTA site visit and talked about plans for a publicity campaign. Bil’s comments are incorporated into more detailed discussions of these topics below.
After Bil’s welcome to our new board members, I presented a summary of the project’s first training session and passed out draft copies of the Training Manual. I showed a few Powerpoint slides of the November training session. Much of the work of training and its planning fell to Hunter’s Library Systems Dept. (Thank you Jill, Melissa, and Robin.)
At the meeting we also looked at the Kephart database as a model for the Craft Revival’s own searchable database. The group looked as well at the project’s promotional website, which will be used to provide an online public presence for the project. Taking off from their original design, Anna and Melissa worked to complete this first draft of the prototype site. Both of these sites—the promotional brochure and the draft of the Craft Revival website—can be viewed at:
http://library.wcu.edu/libraryinsider/craftrevivalgrant/index.htm
A reminder that the above address can be used to find other Craft Revival documents, including the original grant application and past newsletters.
ARTISAN FILES
During the fall semester, undergraduate students Hannah Grace Jones and Travis Hurdle worked on creating reference files—a sort of visual bibliography—of craftsmen that likely participated in the craft revival. These files will be added to over the course of the spring semester and will be used to help identify and place craftsmen within the overall story.
PUBLICITY
Bil and Anna met with Leila Tvedt, Associate Vice Chancellor of External Relations, to outline a plan for promoting the project. She was quite interested in the story and will work with us to target publicity releases to specific points in the life of the project. We also discussed ways to integrate the project into other WCU activities and programs. We are planning on a January press release followed by more targeted articles in the future.
SITE VISIT
I am currently working with Penny Hornsby, Federal Programs Consultant, at the NC State Library to schedule a site visit for the LSTA team in late January or early February. The team has not yet decided if it wants to tour to each Heritage Partner’s site or meet as a group here at the Hunter. I have offered to schedule and lead an auto tour if the group wants to travel to Brasstown and Penland. I do hope they decide to take the time as this is an excellent opportunity to see a Heritage Partners grant operating in some of the state’s more rural communities. I have suggested the team can visit all three sites from Raleigh-to-Raleigh in a three-day visit.
WEB CONTENT
I have met a number of times with each of our Heritage Partners to discuss the themes and storyboard that will evolve into the Craft Revival website. Over the course of the spring semester, I will focus on coordination of research, writing, editing, image selection, and interpretation. I am thrilled with the material I’ve seen so far. Our partners have a wealth of visual resources to contribute to the project.
DATABASE
In the meantime, Partners are busy scanning the first batch of images that we will post to the site. We are working on a short deadline (Jan. 10th) to receive the first batch of 50 images from each of the Heritage Partners. Once the dvds arrive, Melissa imports them into Content dm and works with me on reviewing the metadata for corrections, relevance, and consistency. We are constantly adding slight revisions to our procedures, hoping that this will help keep the project on track. You can view new documents on metadata editing and watermarking using the same URL as above.
NEXT MEETING
Shortly, we will be scheduling an all-day spring meeting that I anticipate will occur in March. We’ll be looking at dates in the very near future, so if there are any weeks that won’t work for you, please let me know. We always like to have as many folks at the meetings as possible. Your input is crucial to the success of the project.
Anna Fariello
January 4, 2005
Hunter Library | Library Insider | Last updated: 1/5/06 Melissa Young