Volume 3, Issue 2
March 2006
North Carolina
ECHO
Exploring Cultural Heritage Online
NC ECHO
www.ncecho.org
State Library of North Carolina
4640 Mail Service Center
Newsletter
Raleigh, NC 27699-4640
Phone: (919) 807-7418
Editor: Hilary Perez
Inside this issue:
Staff Notes
1,2
Survey Update
1
Mark Your Calendars
2
Metadata Matters
2
Spotlight
3
NC ECHO Advisory Committee
4
Staff Notes
Hilary Perez has just
joined the NC ECHO
Яс
^ team as project ar-
Ян
chivist. Hilary comes
I to NC ECHO from the
North Carolina State
Archives. Some of you will remem¬
ber her as Hilary Kanupp from the
two years she spent as our very
capable NC ECHO project assistant
from 2001-2003. We’re happy to
have her back with us again.
Alma Woodard is the
new NC ECHO Pro¬
ject Assistant. Alma
joined the staff in
November and helps
out in the office.
She comes to us
from NC DOT’S Fiscal Section.
Alma enjoys history and is enthusi¬
astic to work with NC ECHO. We
are pleased to have her on board.
Our Initial survey
all 100 counties
completel
of
Is
We are very pleased to announce that NC ECHO has completed the initial survey of all
100 counties! We have spent the past five years crisscrossing the state visiting North
Carolina's institutions and learning about the state's rich cultural heritage. We've visited
everything from large academic library special collections to genealogy vertical files at
public library local history rooms. We’ve looked at government archives, corporate ar¬
chives, academic archives, denominational archives, historical society archives, and
even an archive of bluegrass music at Fiddler's Grove. We've been to farm museums,
train depot museums, jailhouse museums, science museums, firehouse museums, mili¬
tary museums and even a Museum of the Alphabet. We've looked at million-year-old arti¬
facts at the Aurora Fossil Museum, browsed the fascinating toilet and commode collec¬
tion at the Brady C. Jefcoat Museum, and even used a magnifying glass to see two fleas
dressed in tiny costumes at Belhaven Memorial Museum. We've seen historic sites that
highlight the Civil War era, African American history. Native American life, and even the
one-time largest herring fishery in the world in Colerain. We've met librarians, archivists,
museologists, historic sites interpreters, and the most enthusiastic of volunteers. We got
a flat tire taking a Kevin Cherry recommended “shortcut" from Raleigh to Lincolnton, lost
hotel reservations in Charlotte, were a breath away from running out of gas near Petti¬
grew State Park, got lost in nearly every county and slid down a fire pole in Kings Moun¬
tain.
All in all, we had fun and learned a lot. But even though the initial survey is done, we will
never be finished. New institutions are being created all the time. We’ve already heard
tell of a telephone pioneers museum that will open in Lenoir this summer and we are
making plans to visit a new children’s museum that just opened in Durham. We also
hear about existing institutions or collections that we have missed. We've recently
learned of a religious art collection in Caldwell County and an artifact collection at an his¬
toric inn in Asheville. We welcome this information and encourage everyone to e-mail us
at ncecho@library.dc r.state.nc. us with news of institutions that are not represented at
www.ncecho.org.
With the completion of the initial survey, it is time to move on to the next phase of the
project. We will begin compiling a report of the information we learned from our needs
assessment surveys of NC ECHO institutions. After we have finished the report, we will
travel around the state and share this information with our partner institutions.
