|
HERITAGE OF WNC WNC HERITAGE |
|
|
|
Heritage of WNC (Western North Carolina) and WNC Heritage have now
merged into one site, called "WNC Heritage,"
located at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and
representing collections held at UNCA, Asheville Art Museum,
Asheville-Buncombe County Library, Asheville Historic Resources
Commission, and the YMI Cultural Center. As a collaborative web
site, the collections represent materials from the partners and from other supporting
agencies and centers, including the Center for Diversity Studies and
History [@] Hand, a private research agency in Asheville. Entry into
the web site may use either WNC Heritage or
Heritage WNC, both will direct the user to one
location.
The merger of the two web sites, "Heritage of WNC" and "WNC Heritage," occurred in January of 2007 and represents an effort to bring the work of three Library Services and Technology (LSTA) grants together under one web address and consortium. The new site incorporates work begun in what was called the "Land of the Sky" grant in 1998. This initial grant brought the original partners together: UNCA, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and the YMI Cultural Center. These original partners focused on African American culture and brought together materials from their collections that reflected their diverse community. This first grant reproduced photographs, slave records, documents and fine art that reflected African American life and community in Asheville and the surrounding region from the middle of the 1800's to the present. In 2000, UNCA again engaged in a collaborative grant, but this new partnership did not include any of the original partners and sought to develop a larger theme, that of forest history. The new partners in this second grant included NC State University, Biltmore Estate and the Forest History Society located at Duke University. That grant was principled by NC State. It is intended that the material prepared for that grant also be loaded into the new aggregated site, as much of it pertains to the western region of North Carolina. This material is, however, not yet loaded but is expected to be online in mid-Spring of 2007. In 2001 the original partners, UNCA, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and the YMI Cultural Center, again came together to work with Appalachian State University, the Southern Highland Craft Guild, and the Appalachian Museum at Boone, on a third grant. ASU served as the principle on this grant. Material from the original multi-cultural grant was incorporated into this new partnership as the focus was again on multi-cultural materials. This grant was called "Land of the Sky," and it was focused in addition to the content on the development of a relational database that would provide better user access to the materials added by the partners. Appalachian State University housed the server at Boone, NC and the new location and initiative was called "WNC Heritage." No new material was added by the principle institution, ASU, nor by any of the new partners, however all partners benefited from the technical development of the PHP web site by the ASU team and from the lessons learned in that partnership. In 2004 UNCA again entered into a partnership with the Asheville Art Museum, and the Asheville-Buncombe County Library and the Asheville Historic Resources Commission, was added to the partnership. The focus of this new grant was on "Asheville's Built Environment." The YMI Cultural Center, ASU, the Appalachian Museum at Boone, and the Southern Highland Craft Guild, while not direct participants in this grant cycle, continued to be a non-active partners by maintaining the WNC Heritage site at Boone. The "Asheville's Built Environment" project was principled by UNC Asheville and the database was developed around a new delivery system called CONTENTdm, housed on servers at UNCA. The new web site was delivered through a web address called "Heritage of WNC." This grant successfully completed in the summer of 2005 and yielded the bulk of the data now contained in the current web site. The desire to continue to build on the original partner base, resulted in the agreement to bring the ASU database, "WNC Heritage" to UNCA in January of 2007 where it is in the process of being re-configured and migrated into the collaborative web site "WNC Heritage," and into the CONTENTdm database. The new web site is now collectively called "WNC Heritage" but may be accessed under either "WNC Heritage" OR "Heritage WNC." The static web pages that were developed by the earlier grant projects will also be updated and added to the new web site. Please continue to check the web site for updates as the migration continues to take place. |
| The following information is related to the work recently completed by UNCA, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and the Asheville Historic Resources Commission and that constitutes the greatest portion of the current database.. |
|
ASHEVILLE AND
ENVIRONS |
|
|
About "Asheville's Built Environment" Project
|
ABSTRACT: 1a. Project Overview The UNCA Ramsey Library Special Collections (UNCA); Asheville Art Museum (AAM) and Pack Memorial Library of the Asheville-Buncombe County Library (ABLS) in cooperation with the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies (UNCA CJS), the Asheville Historic Resources Commission (HRC), the Center for Diversity Education (CDE), and History@Hand (HH) propose to develop a virtual collection consisting of approximately 7,100 items documenting Asheville’s built environment. This grant builds on a 2000 LSTA pilot grant given to the Land of the Sky Consortium that began digitizing African American materials from the different institutions and a 2001 LSTA grant that sought to add selected ethnic materials that related to the culture of western North Carolina . The proposed virtual collection will selectively draw from and develop and analyze the rich holdings of the participating institutions. It will seek to enrich access for the educational community both locally, within the state, and nationally. The project seeks to pilot a new method of digital asset management and access that will enable improved sustainability and growth of the collaborative virtual collections. An RFP was prepared for vendors, demonstrations given by vendors, and consensus gained on the digital asset management system best suited for the project. CONTENTdm is the proposed system of choice. 1b. Scope & Significance The proposed virtual collection documents the important period in Asheville’s and western North Carolina’s development between 1880, when the railroad crossed the Eastern Continental divide, growing the city population from 2,610 in 1880 to over 10,000 a decade later, to the late twentieth century when the city of Asheville paid off the debt incurred during the Great Depression. The built environment of Asheville and the surrounding environs reflects amazing growth. Grand private, public and commercial buildings such as the Battery Park Hotel (1886), Kenilworth Inn (ca. 1890), Biltmore Estate (1895), the Grove Park Inn (1912), a new Kenilworth Inn (1918), the Grove Arcade (1921), were constructed. The momentum continued through the 1920s as the Art Deco style became a pronounced influence through buildings such as the Merrimon Avenue Fire Station (1927), Asheville City Building (1928), Asheville High School (1929), Grove Arcade (1929), and the S & W Cafeteria (1930). The Great Depression brought financial ruin to Asheville and construction of grand buildings came to a halt. As the Depression ended, the built environment reflected the city’s sometimes slow recovery from the heavy financial burden inherited from the depression. Significant private residences and public buildings were erected such as Beth Ha-Tephila, the Asheville Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the Asheville Union Bus Station, the Woolworth Building, buildings on the Mars Hill College Campus, the Brevard College Library, the Asheville Citizen-Times building, the Montreat Commercial Center; and the D. Hiden Ramsey Library at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Major architects include Raphael Guastavino, architect for the Basilica of St. Lawrence, Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect for Biltmore Estate; Douglas Ellington, the noted Art Deco architect who designed some of Asheville’s most noted and distinctive public buildings; and a group of architects with the firm Six Associates. This proposal seeks to develop a critically needed Web repository that will make the rich and diverse heritage of western North Carolina more readily accessible for study and reflection to a wider audience particularly North Carolina K-12 students, educators, local historians, heritage tourists, scholars, and business interests. Understanding how the new transportation means, economic cycles of expansion and decline, and the effects of long-term debt affect the built environment of Asheville and western North Carolina, are lessons that go beyond regional geographical boundaries and becomes imminently relevant to all North Carolinians, and national patterns in the built environment. The project’s proposed website will document the changes that occurred to the built environment by including historical photographs, architectural drawings and pertinent archival records of buildings in a uniform database. To augment visitors’ ability to identify and understand these changes, the site will also include analytical web pages about how the use of the built environment has changed over time. The site will include information about the businesses, leaders, and ethnic groups that brought these buildings to life and gave Asheville its distinctive character. It will pay particular attention to the role of ethnic minorities in that process. The source material for the website will be drawn from the holdings of the University of North Carolina at Asheville , Asheville Art Museum , the Asheville-Buncombe County Library, and will draw on the collective knowledge, expertise, and documents held by the cooperative institutions described above. Other cooperative institutions will be invited to participate as the project grows. The Asheville Art Museum holds 4,000 drawings by Richard Sharp Smith, the supervising architect for Biltmore Estate. Smith and his partner Albert Heath Carrier were responsible for many of the remarkable buildings and private residences constructed in Asheville between 1895 and 1924. The museum also holds approximately 500 drawings and blueprints by Douglas Ellington, a noted Art Deco architect. These records document Ellington’s designs for some of Asheville’s most noted, and distinctive public buildings including City Hall, Asheville High School , First Baptist Church, the Merrimon Avenue Fire Station, and the S&W Cafeteria. The Museum expects to add approximately 2000 records selected from the holdings. The Asheville-Buncombe County Library holdings include historical photographs of buildings designed by Ellington and by Smith and Carrier. The library also holds Richard Sharp Smith’s three volume letterbook which contains field notes of his work. Additionally, the library has an extensive collection of drawings, photographs, and notes from the Asheville architectural firm of Six Associates. This firm was a major influence on the city’s architecture from the 1940s through the 1960s. The Library expects to contribute approximately 1000 records (photographs, architectural plans and drawings, maps, and documents) selected from their holdings. The UNCA Ramsey Library Special Collections has significant collections of historical photographs that visually document the work of the architects mentioned above and others. The Ewart M. Ball Photographic Collection contains images created between 1918 and 1969 documenting Asheville’s architecture, street scenes, and transportation information. The personal papers and business items of Edgar M. Lyda includes construction bids, letters, designs, blueprints, and photographs related to the building of the Buncombe County Courthouse as well as the building plans, architectural drawings and photographs of the Asheville City Hall designed by Douglas Ellington. The Biltmore Industries Collection contains rich material on the Grove Park Inn and the Biltmore Industries buildings as well as correspondence related to Asheville’s built environment. The Asheville Area Photographic Collection contains images of the city when in the late 1970's and the recently acquired Julian Price Papers contains images of Asheville during its [1980's and] 1990's reconstruction process. UNCA expects to contribute approximately 4000 records. Cooperative Community institutions and UNCA departments will contribute information and interns to the project. An important feature of the website is the inclusion of web pages containing contextual information about the construction, functions, and, as appropriate, the demolition of the built environment. This feature will enable site visitors to interpret how the built environment reflects changes in the larger community and visa versa. The idea of ‘where you are’ will be placed against other places, spaces and other people to explore the politics of place. Each of the three grant partners will contribute information to create these value-added web pages that will explore the webs of spatial relationships in which people are entangled. Additional information about the businesses, leaders, and ethnic groups that brought these buildings to life and give Asheville its distinctive character will be supplied by the UNCA Center for Jewish Studies, Asheville Historic Resources Commission, Center for Diversity Education, History @ Hand consulting firm, the UNCA Departments of History and Political Science, various local businesses, and the western North Carolina grant project for teacher education headed by Pauline Johnson at Mars Hill College. The resulting content will be made accessible over the Internet via a digital asset management system, CONTENTdm. Workshops to promote the use of the site will be held for the libraries of the Western North Carolina Library Network, K-12 educators in Western North Carolina , WNC Public Libraries, and other audiences as they are identified and recruited. The workshops will focus not only on how to access the different content pages, but how to utilize the site to make the rich and diverse heritage of western North Carolina more readily accessible for study and reflection to a wider audience. Educators will be included in the workshop planning and instruction and analytical and critical analysis of the built environment will be emphasized.
|
| Collections do not create themselves. They are assembled by people who make
decisions, who describe, who catalog, who scan, and who spend many hours
organizing information so it may be used by a variety of interested users.
"Asheville's Built Environment," is the most comprehensive project undertaken by
a series of institutional partners in Western North Carolina and involved many
individuals in a variety of tasks. We would like to thank the following
individuals for their contributions to this large project.
In Appreciation Special thanks must be given to Margaret Mitchell, a retired librarian who has given countless volunteer hours to the identification and cataloging of the E.M Ball Collection. The nearly ten years she has been a one day a week volunteer in the UNCA Special Collections, has resulted in the comprehensive analysis of over 8500 images from the some 10,000 images contained in the Ball Collection. Her careful, thoughtful, and thorough work is at the heart of the "Asheville's Built Environment" project and we are all in her debt. We would also like to recognize Sandy Cooper, former North Carolina State Librarian for her support and her vision in the development of the NC ECHO digitization initiative. Without her oversight, her ability to listen and to act, and her personal interest in the efforts put forward by the state Access to Special Collections Work Group, much of our work would not have happened. We will always remain grateful for her commitment to the vision of a North Carolina working together to bring cultural heritage materials to our library, archives, and cultural repository users. Her commitment to the difficult process of collaboration and her patience with the learning curve is a lesson we all can learn from. The struggle to digitize is also a struggle to understand how we create and use information and re-purpose information. Learning how to digitize collections is easy. Understanding how users and providers interact is a skill that takes special insight. Her willingness to take risks and to speak directly to the issues of the collaborative process, to evolving technology and rapidly morphing metadata, and to the quixotic politics of cultural budgets, provided the administrative foundation for the digital cultural initiatives now underway in North Carolina. We thank her for her vision, her advocacy. and her dedication. Many individuals who serve on the staff of the three collaborating institutions have contributed their time and expertise to this project. The Partners and Staff often found themselves working two jobs in order to fulfill tasks required for this grant project. Many have given selflessly. Their professional contributions as a whole, forms the foundation of this grant and their contributions, small and large, are appreciated. The Students at UNCA are some of the finest and brightest and most motivated students anyone can find in any institution. In the true spirit of the liberal arts tradition, they brought their many talents to this project. The departments of Multimedia, History, Literature and Language, Political Science, Computer Science, department of Education, the Center for Diversity Education, and the Center for Jewish Studies, consulted with us and some sent us their brightest and best. It is the student's hard work that is most evident in this project. It is also their total engagement that may be seen in many segments of this multi-faceted project. Their work is truly one of head, heart and hand. In testimony to the engagement, many of our students graduated but came back to contribute to the work of this project. For their many skills and hours of work and their extra dedication to the project, we are grateful. The mutual learning opportunity has been spread across the four institutions as students went into the field to work. Community Volunteers also contributed to the project. They came because they were interested in their community and wanted to participate in a project that afforded some means to give back to community. They also came to learn. The experience of creating a digital repository holds great interest to individuals who are interested in libraries, museums, and cultural work. This project has afforded an excellent training laboratory for interns and volunteers interested in the process of digitization.
|
|
|
|
|
|
*The Heritage of Western North Carolina - Asheville's Built Environment project is 100% supported with federal LSTA funds made possible through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources and guided by NC ECHO. |
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2005. University of North Carolina at Asheville. All rights reserved. Maintained by Special Collections, UNCA. This page last updated January 5, 2007. Comments: hwykle@unca.edu |
