IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

Despite the necessity for institutions to extend virtually since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural heritage institutions have found in-house digitization and online hosting of their materials challenging. Reasons for that range from limited staff, time, understanding of the digitization process, to restrictive budgets. The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC) is a statewide digitization program that works with cultural heritage institutions to scan, describe, and host historical material online. The center’s services, which are performed at no cost to the institution, are essential for many who wish to digitize their collections but lack the technology, knowledge, and/or budget. In early 2022, the Burwell School Historic Site (BSHS), located in Hillsborough, North Carolina, received a grant for their Archives and Database Recovery Project. The grant was used in part to create an 80-hour internship focused on digitizing frequently used and fragile materials. Recognizing the completion of the project would have been near impossible with the time and budget allotted, I fostered a collaboration and created a dual internship between the NCDHC and BSHS. This paper argues that the framework of the partnership between the NCDHC and BSHS was particularly successful in 1) promotion of positive community collaboration and partnership between historical institutions, 2) creation of high-quality digital preservation copies, and 3) increased access and use of historical materials for the public.