LAND OF THE SKY PROJECT OVERVIEW

"LAND OF THE SKY" PROJECT OVERVIEW

	PRIMARY PARTNERS: Asheville Art Museum ; Asheville-Buncombe Library System ; University of North Carolina at Asheville ; YMI Cultural Center, Asheville.
	PRIMARY PROJECT DIRECTOR: Helen Wykle, Public Services Librarian/Coordinator Special Collections, UNC Asheville
	OVERVIEW OF PROJECT
	The Land of the Sky Demonstration Project is a collaboration of four public institutions, including two libraries, a museum and a cultural center. The Special Collections in D.H. Ramsey Library at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA), Asheville Buncombe Library System (ABLS), YMI Cultural Center (YMICC), and Asheville Art Museum (AAM) share a common goal to better serve the information needs of ethnic minorities in the mountains of Western North Carolina (See Attachment 1 for profiles of the four partner institutions). Together they propose to build a digital repository of core information by and about those ethnic minorities in Western North Carolina , drawn from the collections of the four institutions and expanded by a joint effort at outreach. The joint repository will hold materials that are interdisciplinary, broad-based, accessible, and of the highest quality. It will serve as a reliable resource for the K-12 population in Asheville , the region, and the state and will raise community awareness of the significant contributions of Blacks, Native Americans, and other ethnic minorities to the region, the state and the nation. The project will be a model educational project for small to mid-sized communities who wish to address the information needs of increasingly diverse populations and who want to stimulate learning in under-served ethnic populations. It will provide a guide for those interested in collaborating on digitization projects and who aim to distribute collections to specific ethnic populations. It will provide researchers an opportunity to study the performance of such collaborative endeavors.
	This project is proposed as a pilot to be funded by the LSTA Statewide Leadership Project: Access to Special Collections Planning Project. It is expected that the project will extend to June 30, 2001.

	Major Acitivities:
	The focus of activity will be on the project’s educational aspects. Core collections related to ethnic minorities at the partnering institutions will be evaluated, compiled and converted to a standard digital format. Photographs will be identified, scanned, and entered into searchable databases. Text materials will be digitized and organized into easily accessible finding aids. The resulting files will be shared via a common portal at UNCA. Student interns will assist in the creation of digital materials and in processing activities at the partner sites. By actively engaging the collections, preparing Web pages, curricular guides, exhibits, lesson plans, and other derivative items from primary source materials at the partner institutions, these student interns will hone critical thinking skills and learn real-life work skills. It is expected that the students will be immersed in cross-cultural experiences while working on the project, and ethnic minorities will be encouraged to participate as interns. When working with site staff the students will be expected to meet the same high standards of work performance they might encounter upon graduation. They will have an opportunity to be creative in a guided environment and to interact with a range of age groups, ethnic groups, and new cultural contexts while contributing to an important information resource.

	Anticipated Results:
	The project outcome will be a sustainable program that will grow to provide the African American community, Native Americans and other ethnic minorities a voice and presence in the programs of the regional schools. The intent of this project is to provide access to reliable information on Blacks, Native Americans, Latinos and other under-represented ethnic groups in Western North Carolina, the state, and the U.S. Further, the project will create processes for collaboration that will enrich the community service of four public institutions and will generate educational resources for a range of students in the regional schools. It will stimulate other similar institutions to engage in collaborative ventures that reach out to under-served populations by providing engaging information resources that both teach and train. It will provide a means for discourse and will carry the potential for changing the way cultures think about themselves and the way they are perceived by others. This project will address the issues singled out by the “Listening Project”(1996), a large qualitative investigation of low student achievement undertaken by the Asheville City Schools Foundation (See Appendix 1). The “Listening Project” found that minority students struggle with issues of low self-esteem and are unable to find relevancy in the educational process. This project will provide a relevant context and a means to address educational practices that in our region and in the U.S. at large, too often result in racially biased outcomes.
	This project proposes to expand a Federal IMLS ( Institute of Museum and Library Services) grant that is currently under review. The IMLS proposal is focused on the needs of the African American populations in the Western North Carolina region and has similar goals and objectives to the LSTA pilot project. The pilot project we propose as a demonstration, however, proposes to expand the boundaries of the IMLS grant and address additional minority populations. The addition of Native American populations, Latinos, Jewish population, Greeks and other ethnic minorities, including a large Ukranian population, is expected to expand and complement the IMLS proposal and to broaden the material resources for multicultural studies in the public schools and at the university. Further, we would like to explore the development of resources for the disabled community. Ken Betsalel and Heidi Kelly faculty in Political Science and Anthropology have just returned from an intensive workshop in San Francisco which addressed, among other things, resources for the disabled. They have been interested in documenting the experiences of the disable and Ken’s accomplished photography will be used to build a visual archive of information on the experiences of the disabled. Inclusion of the disable component will challenge us to address access issues for disabled populations (hearing impaired, blind, physically disabled, etc.) on the Web and at the various physical sites with which we partner.
	By also offering these resources through the public library, the local art museum and through the African-American cultural center, the YMI, it is expected that the audience will be greatly expanded and the service substantially augmented. It is also expected that parents and students will be able to share in the educational experience as they visit these sites for resources and to enjoy collaborative exhibits. By making the repository information available on the Web the larger community will be served and a true “community of interest” will be formed and encouraged to grow. If the IMLS proposal is not funded it is expected that the Land of the Sky Demonstration Project will provide a sound baseline for seeking out additional grant funding to continue this ambitious multicultural project.
	It is not known if the IMLS proposal will be funded this September 2000. Whether the IMLS proposal is funded is, however, not factored into the progression of this project, nor will it adversely affect the Land of the Sky Demonstration Project if it is funded. The IMLS guidelines encourage the seeking of additional funding and the building of programs that may be sustained. Work toward the goals of both projects has already begun and much of the preliminary infrastructure for both grants is in place. The Special Collections Web pages at UNCA demonstrate the preliminary work being done on many of the project goals. Considerable progress has been made with regard to standards, formats, preservation, and technology in preliminary discussions with the Partners. Discussion with other interested parties in the community is ongoing. This pilot will support and encourage the continued growth of these collaborative efforts and will encourage more, while strongly supporting the state-wide initiative, the Access to Special Collections Planning Project.
	It needs to be stressed that the collaborative efforts of the partners will prevail regardless of funding. There is a deep commitment within the group to increase access to materials for multicultural education and to do that across a broad range of educational venues. Contact with various cultural institutions, interested individuals, educators, and libraries in the Western North Carolina region clearly signals there is a strong interest in addressing the cultural heritage of the region in some formal and coordinated manner. It is well known that the region is rich in cultural history and that much of that history details the lives of minority populations. This regional and local history is integral to the history of the state. We all have much to gain from understanding our past and preserving that past. A pilot focused on the cultural heritage of multicultural Western North Carolinians is a dynamic starting point. From kindergarten to higher education classrooms there is a need for regional and local cultural information that will stimulate interest in learning about other cultures and other ethnic groups. There is also a need to move existing collections forward into digital formats. By sharing expertise on digitization, cataloging, preservation, and other collections concerns, the “digital divide” can be closed more rapidly. These efforts are consistent with the efforts of the state and with national cultural heritage projects.
	It is expected that this pilot will encourage other sites to undertake similar projects and that the successes and the failures experienced in this digitization pilot will be available to other institutions and to the state LSTA Access to Special Collections Planning Project. Evaluation of this pilot is a key to the effective implementation of similar projects throughout the state. The collaboration between four diverse cultural institutions will model how “communities of interest” may come together and will help individual institutions determine how they might partner to advantage and will assist the state in planning for support of these “communities of interest.”
	This collaborative project is an excellent fit with the LSTA statewide Leadership Project Plan for Access to Special Collections (see Plan) as it brings together librarians, archivists, museum professionals, and local history groups in a process of exploration of regional culture and new uses of information technology. It capitalizes on current and on future technological infrastructures in the state, the region, and in the broader Internet. It explores the disparate standards at work in local collections and attempts to arrive at agreed upon collaborative best practices. These are the first steps in building a statewide information resource. By supporting a comprehensive collaborative project such as the one proposed here, the state can make informed recommendations regarding standards, technologies, work-flow, copyright issues, funding, and a myriad of other issues. Careful evaluation of this pilot will provide the necessary foundation for building a statewide network of similar cultural repositories.
	The pilot is also a good fit with initiatives within the UNC system. It will seek to work with new and proposed information technology initiatives such as the recent two year $1.5 million Federal CATALYST grant provided to the UNC Division of University-School Programs in the University of North Carolina system, that aims to improve technology training for pre-service public school teachers in the state. It also supports the recent five year $3 million grant from the SAS Institute that seeks to “…contribute to the effectiveness of our colleges and universities as well as promote the growth of technically skilled graduates, ready to take on real-world challenges…”. It will also support the Department of Public Instruction’s NCWise Owl which seeks to close the “digital divide” by making providing access to resources which will support the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. The Land of the Sky Demonstration Project will also support state education initiatives through its partnership with UNCA’s Education department and in its direct contact with local school teachers. Starting locally will help to build a better state-wide infrastructure at the technical, human, and administrative levels.