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The Folklife Resource Center at USC's McKissick Museum houses a comprehensive collection of audio-visual materials that document the state's folk culture through music, traditional pottery, foodways, sweetgrass basket making, and other areas.
The trove of information consisting of manuscripts, photos, audio and video recordings, and other materials donated by individuals or generated by the center's fieldwork since the early 1980s will allow researchers now and in the future to have a better understanding of the state's cultural identify.
But as the voluminous collection grew over time, two things became evident: much of the material was in danger of deteriorating from the effects of age, which in turn threatened its access for researchers who wanted to use it.
Now thanks to a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services in Washington, which funded the center's Digital Traditions Project, a large percentage of the center's holdings are being converted to digital format and eventually will be available via a new Web site that is set to launch in August.
"To see this turn out how you envisioned it is pretty rewarding," said Saddler Taylor, chief curator of folklife and research at McKissick who has spent the last two and a half years guiding the project.
Through a collaborative effort with S.C. ETV, which helped with technical aspects of the Web site design and implementation, Digital Traditions will provide a portal into the center's archives. And it will ensure that future material collected by the center also will be digitized and made available to users via the Web.
The grant enabled the purchase of equipment needed to transfer Resource Center holdings to digital format, and creation of a training ground for USC students to get experience with video and audio editing and image digitization.
"That's important because in everything we do we try to involve students," Taylor said. "The equipment is a resource for students to get training in a real-world environment. These are skills that are very appealing to prospective employers."
When the Web site is launched in late August, it will feature information on four pilot projects that have undergone digitization: the Rural Humanities Project and the Rural Arts Initiative, two surveys of traditional art in counties of the Heritage Corridor along the southwestern side of the state; Row Upon Row: Sweetgrass Basketmaking in the S.C. Lowcountry; and Southern Stews, a fieldwork project documenting Southern one-pot cooking traditions.
"Whether the material is image, audio, or video media, the grant allowed us to take all the random components and many different formats held in the collection and digitize them to create a more relevant archive that can easily be accessed and translated into a Web application," Taylor said.
The four pilot areas that will initially appear on the Web site will provide "enough information to give people a good idea of what the project is about and then do substantial research online," Taylor said.
The goal is to have at least a representation of every project in the collection available on the Web.
"I don't know if it will ever be a wholesale presentation where every single image and every minute of audio and video will be available via the site, but a very large percentage of it will be," Taylor said.
For information in the collection that is not online, the Web site will provide a finding guide for additional research that can be done at the center, which is working with the state Department of Education to ensure the data is a resource that is relevant for educators and students at the K-12 level.
"There will be curriculum guides and the site will address curriculum standards and be relevant for teachers who want to incorporate the material into lesson plans," Taylor said. "S.C. ETV has been an invaluable partner in addressing the K-12 education issues."
The material will also be useful for University faculty and students, especially those involved with the humanities--anthropology, sociology, Southern Studies--any of those with a research focus geared toward the South Carolina cultural landscape, Saddler said.
5/06
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Jennifer Quier, a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Science, works at The Folklife Resource Center at USC's McKissick Museum to transfer the center's holdings to digital format.
