New LSTA Grant!

We're pleased to announce that UNC Greensboro University Libraries was awarded a 2018-2019 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) EZ grant. The grant provides $14,416 to support one year of work to research and develop a statewide archival processing service. This service would provide smaller cultural heritage institutions with assistance in arranging and describing their archival collections, thereby providing researchers with greater access to collections often considered “hidden.” University Archivist Erin Lawrimore wrote the successful application and will serve as the grant's principal investigator.

Through this grant, a steering committee will be formed to explore the most effective ways of providing these services as well as the scope of the future service. Guidelines to be developed through this initial project include an application process and rubric for prioritization of service requests from institutions, best practices for archival arrangement and description completed through the service, and a workflow for ingesting and sharing finding aids from institutions. Additionally, online training modules in archival management will be created to ensure that institutions benefiting from the service will be prepared to manage and provide access to their archival collections after the processing service concludes.

This grant is made possible by funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (IMLS grant number LS-00-18-0034-18).

A Well Crafted NC Update

After a very successful launch event on April 14th at Little Brother Brewing in Downtown Greensboro, the Well Crafted NC project continues to grow. The project, which began in Fall 2017 thanks to a University Libraries Innovation and Enrichment Grant, will be expanding its documentation scope to cover the craft beer and brewing industry across North Carolina. Between 2010 and 2017, North Carolina saw the number of independent craft breweries in the state skyrocket by 445% (from 45 in 2010 to 245 in 2017). In 2016, the craft beer industry had a $2.042 billion impact on the economy (ranked 10th in the country). During this new phase of growth, Well Crafted NC will focus on collecting more oral history interviews with brewers and brewery owners in our state. The project will also continue collecting and digitizing historical records from North Carolina breweries.

An image from the Well Crafted NC launch event

Additionally, one the project leaders - University Archivist Erin Lawrimore - recently received a Faculty First Summer Scholarship Support Award from UNC Greensboro's Office of Research and Engagement. This award will support a series of oral history interviews with women brewers and brewery owners in North Carolina. This project will ensure that the voices of the women in the industry are heard, that their stories are recorded in their own words, and that they are included as a vital piece of the history of beer and brewing in our state.

The Well Crafted NC team has expanded the project's outreach and educational components as well. In addition to the launch event, Well Crafted NC did pop up exhibits at the Biere de Femme festival as well as at the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce's April Coffee and Conversation event. They will also be doing an exhibit on June 2nd at the Beer City Festival in Asheville. The project leaders recently were interviewed on the local podcast Gate City Chatter. Fox 8 News also did a feature piece on the project and the history of beer and brewing in Downtown Greensboro. Other coverage includes a front-page article in the Greensboro News & Record as well as articles in Winston-Salem Monthly, Greensboro 1808, and Western North Carolina Woman magazine.

A promotional photo from Natty Greene's,
from the Well Crafted NC collection

Well Crafted NC is a project of the UNC Greensboro University Libraries. The project coordinators are Richard Cox (Digital Technology Consultant, ERIT), David Gwynn (Digital Projects Coordinator, ERIT), and Erin Lawrimore (University Archivist, SCUA). To keep informed about the new developments with the project, you can follow Well Crafted on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. To learn how you can support the growth of the Well Crafted NC project, please see www.wellcraftednc.com/support.

Announcing “Well Crafted: A History of Downtown Greensboro Brewing”

UNCG University Libraries is excited to launch the new project “Well Crafted: A History of Downtown Greensboro Brewing.” This project will collect and promote the history of breweries in downtown Greensboro from the saloons of the 1890s to the craft breweries of today. We will be conducting oral history interviews with many of the key players in the downtown Greensboro brewing scene, digitizing materials related to local brewing history, and creating timelines and maps to help trace the changes in the brewing industry in Greensboro.

You can follow our progress and learn more about local beer history on our soon-to-be-launched website: http://www.wellcraftednc.com. We’ll also be active across a number of social media channels:

• Facebook (wellcraftedNC) 
• Twitter (@wellcratednc) 
• Instagram (@wellcraftednc) 
• Tumblr (wellcraftednc.tumblr.com) 

Also, stay tuned for details on a big project launch event in April 2018 (coinciding with North Carolina Beer Month)!

Image of the Cascade Saloon in Downtown Greensboro (1904-1905), taken from the pictorial promotional booklet “Southward the Sun of Progress Shines.”

Well Crafted is supported by the 2017-2018 UNCG University Libraries Innovation and Program Enrichment Grant Award. Project leaders are David Gwynn (ERIT), Richard Cox (ERIT), and Erin Lawrimore (SCUA). If you have questions, you can contact us through social media or at wellcraftednc AT gmail DOT com.

University Archives Completes Grant to Enhance Oral History Interview Access

University Archives recently completed work on a grant-funded project to provide enhanced access to many of our oral history interviews with African American students who attended Woman's College/UNCG in the 1960s. These oral history interviews, which are part of SCUA's African American Institutional Memory Project, were previously available online only as a PDF transcription. Even with this somewhat limited access, the interviews were frequently used by undergraduate students and others seeking to gain information on the personal experiences of students during this time.

This project, which was supported by the University Libraries' Innovation and Enrichment Grant Program, allowed us to augment access to a total of 27 of our oral history interviews -- two more than the initially-proposed 25. Using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, we indexed the interviews and created time syncs that make it easier to search and move between the written transcription and specific points in the audio recordings. We also established a workflow that will incorporate indexing and syncing via OHMS into the workflow for future University Archives' oral history projects.

For the first time, direct access to the audio recordings of these valuable interviews is available online. You can browse and listen to these enhanced interviews through the Libraries' digital collections portal.

Questions about the project may be directed to University Archivist Erin Lawrimore.

University Archives Awarded University Libraries’ 2015 Innovation and Enrichment Grant

University Archivist Erin Lawrimore has been awarded the UNCG University Libraries’ Innovation and Enrichment Grant for 2014-2015. Her project will focus on enhancing access to oral history recordings conducted by staff of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) as part of the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection.

SCUA has a long tradition of conducting and preserving oral history interviews with faculty, administrators, students, and alumni from across the University’s history. These interviews, which typically are an hour or more in length, provide in-depth information about an interviewee’s contributions to and viewpoint on specific time periods or events in campus history. A recent focus has been on documenting the experiences of African American students during the 1960s and 1970s. Often these interviews provide valuable personal insight into history in a way that the official university records cannot.

Currently, access to these oral histories is provided primarily through the interview transcript (the word-for-word text of the interview). Audio recordings are available on CD if requested, but access to these recordings is not provided online. The transcripts are among the highest ranked downloads from across the University Libraries’ digital collections, yet the process of finding relevant information within the transcripts is often challenging due to their lengthy nature.

This project will utilize an open-source tool (the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, developed by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries) to provide access to oral history audio recordings online and time-synch the audio recordings to existing transcripts. This will allow researchers to more readily search each oral history recording for relevant information and quickly skip to certain key topics discussed in the interview. At the conclusion of the project in June 2015, it is anticipated that at least 25 enhanced oral history audio recordings and accompanying transcripts will be made available to researchers online. Additionally, the project will establish a workflow for providing enhanced access to additional oral history interviews in SCUA.

Created by Dean Rosann Bazirjian in 2009 and first awarded in 2010, the objective of the Innovation and Program Enrichment Grant is to provide one-time funding of up to $2,500 for projects that will innovatively enhance and expand library services and programs.