Newsletter: June 2008
State Library grant
We’ve received word from the State Library that the Hunter Library has been awarded a 4th year of funding for the Craft Revival project. The award totals $90,616, full funding. The Hunter will also be working with Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian to implement a grant of $47,000 from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. We look forward to a banner year.
Staff changes: Anna Craft
The Hunter has hired Anna Craft, a new graduate of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill as its new Metadata Librarian. For the past 3½ years, Anna worked on NC State’s Digital Library Initiatives. Her experience includes working on the NCSU Libraries' public website redesign and migration, creating Encoded Archival Description finding aids for the Special Collections Research Center, and creating metadata for the University Archives Digital Photograph Project. She begins work on August 11. Anna will take Ginny’s place on the Hunter Library Home Team and, no, we did not hire her because of her name…although it does seem to be a mystical sign.
Staff changes: Ginny Daley
The Craft Revival project team thanks Ginny Daley and Suzanne McDowell for their years-long service to the project. After completing a consult evaluation for of database entries at the end of Year II, Ginny came on staff to work as part of the Hunter Library Home Team. Ginny’s work focused on correcting metadata previously submitted by Partners and helping the project’s Partners upgrade their skills in terms of writing archival descriptions. Ginny will remain with the project as a Consulting Archivist to assist with training the new Metadata Librarian and assist Cherokee partners with selections and Collection Guides.
Staff changes: Suzanne McDowell
Suzanne has worked as Curator of the Mountain Heritage Center for 20 years. At the end of May, she left the Center to join her husband in retirement. Suzanne has certainly not retired in the traditional sense; as we speak, she is at MESDA for an intensive summer institute. We hope to tap Suzanne’s weaving expertise and positive attitude during the next year of the project.
Linking protocol
Previously, we established two linking protocols for the project. If a webpage link took the viewer to an external site, the link opened in a new window. That allows viewers to “hold their place” on the site. With links within the Craft Revival site—from webpage to database—the new link opened in the same window. At our last Home Team meeting of the year, we debated the merits of staying in the same window and came up with several reasons to change this practice. A viewer, once in the database, might decide to explore other items, thus, losing one’s place on the website. We’ve now streamlined the linking protocol so that all links open in a new window. Project Assistant Jason Woolf further suggested that the new window open at 75%, so as not to block the view of the original site. Melissa Young was able to accommodate this and the project has a new look, albeit subtle.
Database glitch
Over the past month, the database has had some unidentified problems with scrambled metadata and images. After examining these, it now appears to be the result of a glitch at ContentDM, rather than a problem here at home. Melissa is in contact with ContentDM staff who are working on this. The scrambling is quite random, making it all the more difficult to track down the problem.
Scanning to avoid Moire pattern
While few of our Partners are currently scanning, I have noticed problems with Moire patterns on some of our digital images. These are patterns that emerge when one scans an image that was made using a gray-scale screen, a common printing technique prior to digital printing. The image is made up of small, almost imperceptible black and white dots, but the scanner picks up on the dots to create a pattern. One way to avoid this is to skew the image on the scanner. In other words, don’t line the image up parallel to the edge of the scanner, but instead, put the item on the scanner at an angle. Of course, you will then have to rotate the image once it is scanned to straighten it again, but this will avoid the distracting Moire.
New pages up: Crossnore School
We have recently added a page on the Crossnore School, an original Craft Revival site. Crossnore was one of many schools that participated in the Craft Revival by establishing a craft production center. At Crossnore, this was a Weaving Department that operated from 1920 and continues, with modification, today. The project has permission from Philis Alvic to use text from her booklet on Crossnore. Anna and her undergrad students used OCR to capture a section of the booklet. Adding Crossnore is the first step in expanding the project beyond our Heritage Partner organizations, an intent articulated in the original grant. It is important to represent the Craft Revival as it was, rather than to present a picture based on information at hand. See Crossnore at:
http://craftrevival.wcu.edu/story/crossnore.html
New pages up: Cherokee Basket Index
Anna and Tonya have identified the first set of basket weaving patterns, photographing these from baskets in Qualla Arts permanent collection. These baskets have been loaded into the database and are also featured on a separate page accessible from The Crafts portal. This page highlights individual basket weaving patterns, illustrating patterns using close-ups of baskets in the digital collection. Thanks to Melissa for the novel page construction that allows a viewer to click on a basket to reveal the larger pattern. The page is expandable and will be added to as the project moves into year IV. See basket pattern index at:
http://craftrevival.wcu.edu/crafts/basketindex/index.html
Craft Revival in the news
The Craft Revival project was cited in the article “Documenting the American South and the Public Library User: A Proposal to Improve Access for the General Public to a Database of Southern and North Carolina Materials” in the newly released issue of North Carolina Libraries. In this well written piece, the authors discuss their experience with Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, citing a study of users. While the original audience was perceived to be the educational community (K-12 up through higher ed), the authors found that the majority of DAS site users were the general public. From here, the authors propose the creation of a statewide system to direct readers to NC’s numerous digital/historical resources, using either NC ECHO or NC LIVE as a central agency. WCU’s Craft Revival was mentioned as an example of the state’s digital resources, along with sites maintained by East Carolina University and NC State. One conclusion posed by the authors was that the popularity of such sites is driven “not primarily in the information it provides, but the stories that are conveyed.” Here at the Hunter, we’ve tried to use the database to support interpretation, while at the same time, allow the interpretive side of the website to function as a springboard to further research using primary source materials on the database.
Yearend
While the campus appears quiet, June and July are actually busy months for grant-funded projects. Anna and Margaret Watson are meeting regularly to complete budget transactions from Year III while setting up two new accounts and contracts for Year IV. We also begin our final database tallies that will go into a final report to be filed with the state. We ended the year with just under 3,000 scans in the database. A breakdown of these—by partner and by item format—will be included in the next newsletter.
Anna
Hunter Library | Library Insider | Last updated: 7/9/08 Melissa Young