Z. SMITH REYNOLDS LIBRARY

Digital Forsyth
Awarded $74,079 for the period 7/1/07 to 6/30/08
Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Coy C. Carpenter Library at the School of Medicine, the Winston-Salem State University Archives at C. G. O’Kelly Library, and the Forsyth County Public Library will develop a comprehensive online digital collection of photographs pertaining to the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century history of Forsyth County. The partners will produce a virtual collection with greater value and access to citizens, students, scholars, and lifelong learners as a collective whole than would be possible through isolated, individual efforts. Photographs focus on people, places, businesses, and institutions in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County of great significance to North Carolina’s cultural heritage.

Z. Smith Reynolds Library’s “Digital Forsyth” Collaborative Project Planning Grant
Awarded: $11,992
Source: State Library of North Carolina

Funds support a consultant to help Z. Smith Reynolds Library plan a collaborative digitization project with its two partners, Forsyth Public Library and Winston-Salem State University’s C. G. O’Kelly Library. Each institution has a rich collection of unique resources that document a wide range of events and topics in the historical, socioeconomic, and cultural development of Forsyth County. The partners plan to produce a virtual collection of greater value as a collective whole than individual efforts.

The project will focus on:
• making significant cultural resources more accessible by using new digital technologies and the Internet;
• providing librarians/archivists with the education necessary to develop and to manage subsequent digital projects; and
• developing a solid foundation for continued collaboration between three of the major cultural repositories in the Winston-Salem area to respond to community needs for improved library services.

ZSR Library Special Collections Finding-Aid Conversion
Awarded $20,700 for the period 7/1/04 to 6/30/05
Source: State Library of North Carolina

Z. Smith Reynolds Library aims to convert all of its 530 paper-based, special collection guides into electronic documents that will be available over the Internet and through the library's online catalog. Some of the encoding will be outsourced, while ZSR Library staff undertake pre- and postprocessing activities to ensure that the converted materials are accurate and useful and gain proficiency with the encoding techniques for future projects. Accomplishing the retrospective digitization of existing paper-based guides will allow future local efforts to focus on creating new finding aids as they are written.

EZ Grant LSTA Project Planning
Awarded $22,000 for the period 2/1/03 to 9/30/03
Source: State Library of North Carolina

Funds will support a consultant, who will help the library prepare a strategic plan to digitize parts of the collection. Many unique materials can be made much more accessible via the internet, and, at the same time, digitization will help to preserve fragile materials by limiting the need to handle them.