Digital Guidelines and Resources

1. Digital Preservation Metadata
2. Digital Collections
3. Web Archiving 
4. Digital Preservation Guidelines

1. Library of Congress Digital Preservation Resources - Information about Digital Formats and Sustainability, Digital Preservation Tools & Open Source Software, Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), and Reports and Events related to Digital Preservation

2. National Archives Preservation Resources - Resources related to preserving different types of formats (not just digital), Preservation Strategies, Preservation Programs, and Events and Special Projects related to Preservation

3. State Archives of North Carolina for Researchers - Find information about ordering copies of material, duplication fees, obtaining permission or citations for material in the Archives, and learn about ordering a copy of your academic tanscript.

4. State Archives of North Carolina for State Agencies & Government:

   1. State Agency Records Management Training - Educational materials and training opportunities about managing government records, services available through the State Archives, and steps to take as a record manager or creator

   2. State Agency Retention Schedules & Records Analysts - Find the retention schedule for public records for your institution or agency as well as how to contact your Records Analyst

   3. Digital Records - Learn specifically about Digital Records Policies and Guidelines as well as guidance on transferring electronic reocrds to the State Archives

Learn the status of current and recent initiatives related to our mission of ensuring access and discoverability of NC digital content! Active Initiatives are listed at the top of the list. 

Digital Preservation Exploration

Summary Report: DPE_SummaryReport_201908.pdf

The 2017 Digital Summit Initiative identified Digital Preservation as a key area of interest among cultural institutions in North Carolina and recommended further exploration of collaboration or digital preservation network possibilities. This project is the first step in addressing this recommendation. Digital Preservation Exploration (DPE) is a Statewide Leadership Project funded by LSTA to facilitate discussion and exploration of North Carolina’s cultural institutions’ digital preservation priorities and needs. DPE will assess statewide institutional interest in digital preservation, including determining the level of interest, scope of interest, and potential avenues for addressing needs and goals. To do this, the Planning Committee is coordinating three (3) regional meetings each with approximately 20 professionals from North Carolina cultural institutions to foster communication and collaboration and to share needs, interests, experiences, and goals – expanding on the reported findings in the Digital Summit Initiative survey and discussions from the Digital Summit Initiative meeting.

The meetings will take place spring/summer 2019 with a final, virtual meeting to share the final report planned for late summer / early fall 2019.

By facilitating more conversations with North Carolina cultural institutions, this project seeks to further the conversation started at the Digital Summit as well as determine next steps and concrete options for institutions to explore and collaborate, with active input from the institutions themselves.

A report based on results from the regional meetings is now available includes sections addressing the following outcomes:

1. Determine scope of need and interest: what kinds of institutions? Where are institutions in terms of the process of digital preservation as well as what level of digital preservation they can do?

2. Determine the institutions’ digital preservation goals and priorities

3. Determine feasibility and sustainability of digital preservation-related options for interested institutions

4. Based on these determinations, identify potential approach or approaches to explore and collaborations to pursue

5. Determine next steps and what would be needed to move forward

This project 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 N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (IMLS grant number LS-00-18-0034-18).

Digital Summit Initiative

During 2017, the State Library of North Carolina asked libraries and archives to share information about their digitized and born-digital collections* and other digital information management activities. These included successes, challenges, current responsibilities, and future plans.

Goals

During this “Digital Summit Initiative,” we hoped to accomplish the following:

• To develop a clear view of the current digital landscape in North Carolina.
• To develop a view of the anticipated future digital landscape in North Carolina, based on national and international trends and on institutional and common goals concerning digital materials.

Secondary goals included:

• To inform plans for future digital projects.
• To understand North Carolina institutions' digital priorities.
• To foster new collaborations.

CINCH

CINCH (Capture INgest CHecksum) was a tool that automated the transfer of online content to a repository, using ingest technologies appropriate for digital preservation.
The tool maintained original file timestamps; renamed files with unique, intelligent identifiers; ran virus scans; extracted file-level metadata; created file checksums; validated checksums for file integrity; and tracked all actions in an audit trail document. 

As of December 1, 2018, we are no longer offering a hosted version of CINCH.

NC ECHO

North Carolina ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) was an online portal to online special collections of North Carolina's libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and other cultural institutions. Though this is no longer an active project, you may still search for materials related to the NC ECHO project through the NC Digital Collections.

NC MOSAIC

NC MOSAIC (Managing, Organizing, and Strengthening Access to Institutional Collections) was created to help provide links to state publications that had not yet been added to the NC Digital Collections. In the last 10 years, the backlog of state publications has been completely processed and the state publications have been added to the digital collections, and in November 2017, NC MOSAIC was removed from the NC Digital Collections. All publications previously available in this collection are discoverable either in the Digital Collections or through individual municipal websites.

Family History Vertical File Transcription Project

The Genealogy Vertical File Transcription Project is currently on hold as we explore new tools and approaches to making this content more accessible to researchers online. Though we are not adding materials for transcription at this time, all completed transcriptions are still available and searchable in the digital collections.