Digitization priorities, 2019-2020

The Digital Projects Priorities Team met on 7 August 2019 and approved the following projects for 2019-2020:

New projects:

Grant-funded digitization:

• Women Who Answered the Call: Digitizing the Oral Histories of Women who Served in the U.S. Military and the American Red Cross:
  Digitize and preserve at-risk audiovisual materials (303 audiocasettes, 6 open-reel audiotapes, and 1 VHS videotape) that are part of the Women Veterans Historical Project. Funded via a CLIR Recordings at Risk Grant (Beth Ann Koelsch and David Gwynn)

Library-funded digitization:

• Public Domain Cello Scores and Journals: The project would include the digitization of public domain scores and a set of journals from the Cello Music Collection (Stacey Krim).
• UNCG Dance Theses, 1951-1978:
  This proposal seeks to digitize a collection of Dance theses created by UNCG students between 1951 and 1978. These unique materials exist only in physical copies at this time, and they were not included in a previous retrospective thesis and dissertation digitization project due to considerations including size and accompanying materials (Anna Craft).
• Poetas sin Fronteras: Poets Without Borders, the Scrapbooks of Dr. Ramiro Lagos:
  The proposed project is to digitize a series of scrapbooks and photograph albums documenting the life and career of Dr. Ramiro Lagos, a professor emeritus of poetry in the Romance Languages Department at UNCG, to facilitate access online and to return some of the physical items back to the donor (Patrick Dollar).
• Digitizing of Home Economics Material in UNCG LIbrary Stacks:
  Digitize pre-1923 home economics items, ranging from cookbooks to books about household arithmetic, which are housed in the stacks (Callie Coward and Erica Rau).

Faculty research projects:

• Civil Rights Oral Histories:
  Pilot project to make available interviews conducted by Matthew Barr (Media Studies) as part of a documentary project using OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) and the Omeka platform. This will serve as a proof of concept for an upcoming grant application that will involve collaboration between the University Libraries and Media Studies.

Community outreach projects:

• Temple Emmanuel Project:
  Support Temple Emmanuel in a grant application to digitize newsletters by providing set-up support and hosting for the materials.

Continuing/ongoing projects:

Grant-funded digitization:

• People Not Property: NC Slave Deeds Project:
  Year 2 of an NHPRC-funded project to digitize and transcrive scale deeds from 26 North Carolina counties. Collaborative endeavor between the UNCG University Libraries, North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, and North Carolina Registers of Deeds among others.

Library-funded digitization:

• North Carolina Runaway Slaves Ads Project, Phase 2
• Graduate, Summer Session, and Extension Bulletins

Faculty research projects:

• Oral Contraceptive Ads:
  Support digitization and hosting of a research project for Dr, Heather Adams (English) via a UNCG Libraries Digital Partners Grant.
• Well-Crafted NC:
  Support digitization and hosting a of a project by Erin Lawrimore, Richard Cox, David Gwynn (all UNCG Libraries) and Dr. Erick Byrd (Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality & Tourism) supported by a P2 Grant from the UNCG Office of Community Engagement.
• PRIDE! of the Community:
  Support continuation of a project by Stacey Krim, Partick Dollar, and David Gwynn (UNCG Libraries), initially funded through an NEH grant to document the Triad's LGBTQ+ community
• TriadHistory.org:
  Continue efforts to expand web presence and community events via a collaborative local history collective of Triad cultural heritage institutions. UNCG representatives are David Gwynn (chair) and Erin Lawrimore.

Community outreach projects:

• Junior League Reports:
  Continue digitization of archival material documenting Greensboro history.

Infrastructure projects:

• Islandora Migration:
  Complete migration of digital content to a new platform,

Digital collections priorities, 2018-2019

New projects

People Not Property: Slave Deeds of North Carolina
A collaborative endeavor between the UNCG University Libraries, North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, and North Carolina Registers of Deeds among others. Working as an addition to and evolution of the Digital Library on American Slavery, the project is leading towards a unique, centralized database of bills of sales indexing the names of enslaved people from across North Carolina.When complete, People Not Property will include robust metadata, high resolution images, and full-text searchable transcripts. We hope to open the project to states beyond North Carolina, creating a central location for accessing and researching slave deeds from across the Southern United States.

Photos and Concert Programs of the UNCG Cello Music Collection
The proposed project is to digitize photographs and concert programs from 4 of the Cello Music Collections: Luigi Silva, Elizabeth Cowling, Rudolf Matz, and Ennio Bolognini. The digitization of these materials would enhance the existing cello digital music collections. The concert programs would allow researchers to track the performance careers of these cellists, and the photographs would add a visually appealing component to the collection, which would make the collection more attractive to non-musicians.

Bryan School Annual Reports
Digitize the Bryan School's annual reports to the Provost, from 1969-70 to 2003-04. The Bryan School will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding in the 2019-2020 academic year.

UNCG Graduate, Summer Session, and Extension Bulletins
Digitization of the bound graduate, summer session, and extension course bulletins. These will complement the undergraduate bulletins that were digitized several years ago, providing a complete picture of courses offered at UNCG since its founding. This will allow researchers to learn about these programs offered outside of the standard undergraduate curriculum.

Ongoing projects

• North Carolina Runway Slave Ads (Phase 2, 1840-1865)
• PRIDE of the Community: Triad LGBTQ+ History
• Well-Crafted: the History, Business, & Culture of NC Beer
• Women's Professional Forum Records
• Women Veterans Historical Project
• Peter Paul Fuchs Papers, Phase 2
• Islandora Migration

Big changes

Over the next year or so, we will be making big changes to the UNCG Digital Collections as we move to a new content management system and create a brand new user experience. More details will follow, but our hope is that the new website will make it easier for users to find information, and will provide better search and viewing options for our collections. The look and feel will be simplified and should be much more accessible on mobile devices. Our collections will also continue to be discoverable through WorldCat and the Digital Public Library of America.

There may be some impact and a few moments of confusion starting in a few months as we begin migrating our collections to the new platform. We will try to keep you updated and to minimize the disruptions. The main thing you may notice to begin with is that we will be adding very little new content for the next few months as we do not want to end up adding items in two different places.

Again, more details will follow. We're excited!

William Sidney Porter a/k/a O. Henry

Original pencil drawing by William Sydney Porter

UNCG Digital Collections is excited to be working with the Greensboro History Museum to host digitized items from the William Sydney Porter Papers, 1839-1982.

Porter, a Greensboro native, was better known by the pseudonym O. Henry, was the well-known author of some two hundred published short stories, including "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Gift of the Magi."

The William Sydney Porter Papers contain many first editions, as well as correspondence, printed materials, financial/legal documents, and literary productions. The collection also includes scrapbooks, radio dramalogues, newspaper clippings, sketches and drawings, photographs, magazines, paintings and an audio recording. The bulk of material dates from William Sydney Porter’s lifetime, 1862-1910.

Only selected items from the collection have been digitized, specifically the correspondence series and portions of the financial/legal and artwork series. Additional items may be digitized in the future.

The full collection may be viewed at the Greensboro History Museum.

Neo-Black Society Records

A major new addition to the UNCG Digital Collections is the Neo-Black Society Records, 1969-2013.

From the collection finding aid:

This collection contains the official records that reflect the functions and activities of the Neo-Black Society. These records contain materials related to general body and executive board meetings, budgets, correspondence, memorandums, committee and presidential reports, flyers, programs, and general topics including but not limited to the 1973 funding protest. The collection also contains video tapes, cassettes, compact disks, and floppy disks with photographs and documents. In addition, there are separate collections of photographs, artifacts, and textiles related to the records of the Neo-Black Society...

In 1967, black students at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) formed the student group, the Neo-Black Society (NBS), in response to growing concerns about the support and acceptance of black students on campus. At its founding, the NBS was extremely separatist, calling for parallel university events for black students. The organization was also very vocal in advocating the recruiting of more black faculty at UNCG as well the incorporation of more black history and culture into the curriculum. First meeting in the student lounge, the NBS soon moved to a more permanent room in Elliott Hall. The organization quickly distinguished itself across the campus and within the Greensboro community through its sponsorship of an annual Black Arts Festival as well as a Gospel Choir and other social activities.

In 1973, the NBS had clearly established itself as a strong, albeit confrontational, presence across the UNCG campus. This resulted in some resentment by some white students who consequently pushed for the removal of student funding for the NBS. They argued that the society was segregationist by refusing to admit whites which was a direct violation of the university anti-discrimination regulations. Acknowledging the students complaints, the student senate on the night of March 26-27, voted to withdraw funding for the organization. Hearing the results of this meeting created an immediate backlash across the university as over 300 students began a sit-in movement to occupy the Foust building. Recognizing the frustrations of the students, Chancellor Ferguson agree to appoint a faculty review committee to look into the matter. During this time, the students continued to peacefully maintain a sit-in presence while the committee investigated the matter.

Chaired by psychology Professor Kendon Smith and made up of three white professors and two black professors, the committee agreed on March 30th to uphold the NBS funding and found the student senate in serious breach of procedural errors. Chancellor Ferguson accepted the findings as did most of the faculty. Despite the ruling, some students were still upset and appealed to the board of trustees who voted to remand the matter to the student senate for further consideration. In the fall of 1973, the NBS agreed to add several white members to the organization as well as draft anti-discrimination language into its constitution which appeased the senate and funding was restored.

Today, the Neo-Black Society continues to be an active organization at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Approximately 4000 pages of material were digitized. The project also includes digitization of a group of approximately 150 photos from the University Archives Photographic Prints Collection pertaining to the Neo-Black Society. Selections from the collection had been made available previously as part of the Civil Rights Greensboro project in 2008 and 2009.

The collection was digitized with funding from the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.

Digitization project priorities, 2016-2017

The University Libraries Digital Projects Priorities Team met on Wednesday 22 June and approved the following priority projects for 2016-2017:

New projects:

Good Medicine: Greensboro’s Hospitals and Healers, 1865-2015
This LSTA-funded project will digitize over 47,000 documents, photographs, and other items related to the growth of medical practice and institutions in Greensboro and will include materials from the Cone Health Medical Library, the Greensboro Public Library, and the Greensboro Historical Museum in addition to the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives at UNCG.

This grant is made possible through funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

Women's Professional Association Records
Contains meeting minutes, agendas, correspondence, and organizational records from the Women's Professional Forum, a local women's organization that was founded in Greensboro in 1977. The forum has presented UNCG with a donation to defray the cost of digitization.

Early Cello Manuscripts and Published Works
The pieces selected for this digital project are among the earliest and rarest works found in the Cello Music Collection. In many cases, UNCG is the only library or archive worldwide with the holdings for these editions which date to the 1700s.

Peter Paul Fuchs Papers
Peter Paul Fuchs (1916-2007) was a conductor, composer, teacher, and a significant figure in the performing arts history of Greensboro. Materials too be digitized and included in the Cello Music Collection include 74 unpublished music scores and parts, totaling more than 1600 pages.

North Carolina Alpha Delta Kappa Collection
ADK is an international honorary organization for women educators and these scrapbooks (dating 1954-1994) represent a completely unique view of the activities of a women's organization.

Ongoing projects:

Cone Hospital Collection
This project, undertaken through the financial support of Cone Health, involves digitizing some 15,000 photographs and other documents that chronicle the history of Greensboro's Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. Target date for completion is December, 2016.

Women Veterans Historical Project
Additional oral histories, photographs, and other items will be added to this extensive digital collection documenting the service of women in the American armed forces, once of UNCG's most used digital resources.

Maud Gatewood Collection
Gatewood was an instrumental part of the art in North Carolina during the late 20th and early 21st century. As a graduate of Woman’s College, she is also part of our institution’s history. Her entire collection, including thousands of sketches, along with correspondence and other materials, is being digitized.

I Wish To Say
This project will create a digital archive of the "I Wish to Say" project undertaken by UNCG Assistant Professor Dr. Sheryl Oring, and will present images and transcriptions of messages composed and sent through the project since 2004. Target date for completion is December, 2016.

Pre-1923 Children's Literature
This project encompasses digitizing approximately 100 public domain children’s books from the Early Juvenile Literature Collection, Woman’s Collection, and Special Collections General, some dating to the 1700s.

Metadata and exploratory projects:

We will also be moving forward on:

• The ongoing metadata cleanup for the American Publishers Trade Bindings Collection.
• A new project to create more user-friendly and browsable categories for our digital collections.
• A new project to add rights and usage statements that correspond with the DPLA/Europeana model and offer users a more accurate picture of the rights (and re-use) status of our materials.

Further, we will be working to solicit partners and attract funding for the second phase of the north Carolina Runaway Slave Ads Project, to discover and digitze ads placed between 1840 and 1865.

It's going to be a busy year!

Explorers digitizing Greensboro history

By Stephen Catlett

The UNCG-Hayes-Taylor IMLS Sparks! Ignition grant has gotten off to a great start since we officially launched to the public on February 21. Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson generously agreed to help kick off our project that day, and within a week we had a select group of seven students from the Y's Achievers program. 

These DGH Explorers (Digitizing Greensboro History) have already participated in a lively history conversation with Community Historian Linda Evans of the Greensboro Historical Museum on March 7. And since then have received training on the use of digital cameras and scanners. We started with the actual capturing of some of the Y's own history, digitizing photographs and newspaper clippings on April 4.

Our first "In The Field" session took place last night (April 16) at the law office of local lawyer Richard Gabriel, of Gabriel Berry Weston and Wells. Mr. Gabriel's father, George, operated two small grocery stores on East Market and East Washington Streets after 1940. Richard worked closely with his father and mother and has wonderful stories and information about East Greensboro, especially the vibrant business community as it existed before Urban Renewal destroyed it in the 1960s and 1970s. His father was well respected in the community, especially with the Bennett College students. They autographed Mr. Gabriel's personal copies of the Bennett yearbook, thanking him for his generosity, especially in providing store credit. As one student wrote: "Without your store I would have gone hungry plenty of nights."

We plan to capture more history in the next two months, but it has been especially gratifying working with these young students, who are very inspiring.

Digital collections update

The fall semester was a busy one as we completed or continued work on several projects:

Performing arts collections:

Our digital cello music presence has grown dramatically in the past few months as we added over six thousand pages of manuscript materials and other selections from the following physical collections:

• Lev Aronson Musical Score Collection
• Elizabeth Cowling Musical Score Collection
• Maurice Eisenberg Musical Score Collection
• Fritz Magg Musical Score Collection
• Rudolf Matz Musical Score Collection
• Janos Scholz Musical Score Collection
• Luigi Silva Musical Score Collection and Personal Papers
• Laszlo Varga Musical Score Collection

Local history collections:

Following the successful launch last year of Textiles, Teachers, and Troops, we have added a considerable amount of newly-digitized material on the history of Greensboro, primarily as part of two collections:

• Postwar Urban Renewal and Planning in Greensboro: A collection of  more than four thousand pages of documents illustrating the drmatic changes (some good and some bad) that took place as the result of redevelopment activities in Greensboro following World War II. This project is a collaborative effort between the University Libraries, the Greensboro Public Library, and the Greensboro Historical Museum.
• Records of the Fisher Park Neighborhood Association: Approximately four thousand pages of materials documenting the establishment and growth of Greensboro's first historic district. These materials were digitized in part through a grant from the City of Greensboro's Building Better Communities program.

UNCG collections:

Another big addition has been the Campus Theatre Productions Collection held by the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), with neraly five thousand pages of documents pertaining to plays and other productions performed on campus between 1897 and 1963.

We have also nearly completed digitization of most of the scrapbooks held in SCUA's manuscript collections; this project follows a three-year project in which we digitized scrapbooks held as part of the University Archives.

Last but not least, we have finalized the digitization and display of the Robert Watson Papers and the Randall Jarrell Papers.

Redesigned/enhanced collections:

One of our most significant achievements this semester has been the migration of Civil Rights Greensboro and the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project onto the CONTENTdm server platform, which will allow increased search and discovery options and allow us to integrate those collections into Worldcat and the Digital Public Library of America.

Still to come:

Still in progress this year are additions to the Home Economics Pamphlets collection, the Lois Lenski Juvenile Literature Collection, and a pilot project to digitize items from the Anna Gove Papers. And later this year, we will begin the bulk of the work on an IMLS-funded local history project with the Hayes Taylor YMCA Digital Explorers project. More later on these projects!

Growing cello collections

Two new additions to our digital cello music collections premiered this morning as we added selections from the Laszlo Varga Musical Score Collection and the Janos Scholz Musical Score Collection.

These are sixth and seventh additions, respectively, to the cello music project, which made its first appearance in 2011 with selections from the Bernard Greenhouse Collection.

UNCG's Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives is home to the largest single holding of cello music-related materials in the world.

Digital Projects end-of-year update, 2013-2014

At the end of the academic year, we do a report to the Digital Projects Priorities Team on the past year's activities. This is an edited version of that report. It was a very productive year.

My thanks to the team: to Erica Rau and Kathy Howard in Digital Projects, who did such great work on so many projects; to Callie Coward and Anna Craft from Cataloging; and to Scott Hinshaw, Kathelene McCarty Smith, and everyone else in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. Thanks as well to the department where Digital Projects "lives", Electronic Resources and Information Technology, for a level of support that goes far beyond the call of duty. We couldn't so many great projects without a real collaborative team and I really appreciate the way everyone pulls together to accomplish all our goals!

Special thanks to Stephen Catlett, who completes his tenure as Textiles, Teachers, and Troops project manager this week after doing some amazing work over the past two years. Stephen did an incredible job working with our partners and students on TTT as well as with community outreach on our CBR/local history grant project and coordination of displays and our launch event in April. We are very much going to miss having him around and hope we can rectify that situation soon!

Also, many thanks to this year's team of student workers (Evan Chu, Megan Coker, Tatiana Cox, Rachel Sanders, James Stewart, Phil White, and Hayley Whitehead) and our volunteers (Larry Daniels, Bernitae Reed, and Touger Vang). Your efforts are much appreciated and we couldn't do any of this without you!

An announcement of this year's approved and continuing projects will be available in the next few weeks.

2013-2014 Project Status:

• American Publishers Trade Bindings Phase 6: Complete and online (159 images).
• Campus Life Photos: In progress (322 images).
• CBR Project/Community Collections: Complete and online (1137 images).
• Class of 1951-present: Complete and online (11031 images).
• Creative Writing Manuscript Collections: Nearly complete, mostly online.
• Robert Watson Papers: Complete and online (5973 images).
• Randall Jarrell Papers: Nearly complete, partially online. Should be fully online by September. (6544 images to date).
• Ege Manuscripts: Complete and online (101 images).
• Home Economics Pamphlets Phase II: Scanned, should be online by early July at the latest (8184 images).
• Lois Lenski Rare Books: In progress. 13 books scanned. Should be online by fall. (625 images)
• Manuscript Collections Scrapbooks: In progress, many already online. Probably 15-20 remain. All should be online by December. (10159 images this year)
• Music and Theatre Productions: Nearly done, many already online. Should be completely online August at the latest (2843 images to date).
• Oral History Collections: Approximately 20 new interviews online.
• Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Substantially complete and online (no annual breakdown, approximately 15000 images in-house plus 125000 items from the Charles Duncan McIver Records outsourced this year, two-year total of approximately 180000 images).
• Women Veterans Historical Project: Approximately 15 new oral histories online, 100 other items.

Other Projects:

• DigitalGreensboro.org interface completed by ERIT Development Team.
• Civil Rights Greensboro Migration To CONTENTdm: Complete and should be live this summer.
• Women Vets Migration: Data dump and work plan complete. Target date for completion: early October.
• Worldcat Integration: Most collections now included in Worldcat. 
• DPLA Submission: Most collections now included in Digital Public Library of America. We are currently the third largest contributor in the state (24641 items) with three times as much material as number four.
• Creation of CONTENTdm landing pages based on priority focus areas:
• Local and Regional History
• Performing Arts
• University History
• Women's History

Some Numbers:

We now have 251003 digital files in CONTENTdm, our digital content management system, making 25243 items and spanning nearly a thousand years of history...although most are admittedly from the past 150 years or so.

Included are:

• 8243 newspapers
• 4968 photos/photo folders
• 2223 clippings/folders and items containing clipping
• 1529 pamphlets
• 928 pieces of correspondence
• 702 music scores

Textiles, Teachers, and Troops project launch

Textiles, teachers, and troops project launch from jdgwynn

The Digital Projects team are proud to announce the launch of Textiles, Teachers, and Troops: Greensboro, 1880-1945. The website was publicly presented last night for the first time during an event at the Greensboro Historical Museum. Speakers included Dr. Kevin Cherry, Deputy Secretary of Archives and History in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources; Stephen Catlett; Digital Project Manager for the UNCG University Libraries; and David Gwynn, Digital Projects Coordinator at UNCG.

Textiles, Teachers, and Troops makes available more than 175,000 digital images including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, scrapbooks, printed materials, and oral histories documenting the social and cultural development of Greensboro. The project is a collaboration between UNCG, Bennett College, Greensboro College, Greensboro Historical Museum, Greensboro Public Library, Guilford College, and N.C. A&T State University, documenting the history of Greensboro from 1880-1945 through the influence of the textile industry, education, and the military.

The project was funded in part through a Library Services and Technology Act Grant administered by the State Library of North Carolina.

The project website may be seen at http://digitalgreensboro.org/.