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Vol. 30:3 ISSN 0160-8460 September 2002
The State Historical Records Advisory Board of North Carolina
by Jeffrey J. Crow
North Carolina enjoys a long record of service in the field of archives and records management. In 1903 the North Carolina General Assembly established the North Carolina Historical Commission, and next year the commission will observe its 100th anniversary. R.D.W. Connor, first secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission, became first Archivist of the United States upon appointment by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.
R.D.W. Connor, first Archivist of the United States. Photograph courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History.
The Governor of North Carolina, under authority granted by Federal legislation, established the State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) in 1975. Ten members, appointed by the Governor, compose the board. Members serve 3-year staggered terms. The Deputy Secretary of the Office of Archives and History (currently Jeffrey J. Crow) and the State Archivist of North Carolina (currently Catherine J. Morris) hold permanent positions on the board. Other members of the board must exhibit experience in the administration of historical records or in a field of research that makes extensive use of such records.
The SHRAB serves as the central advisory board for historical records planning and project assistance in North Carolina. It also implements and carries out the objectives of the NHPRC. With the support of the NHPRC, the SHRAB provides services in at least four areas. The SHRAB solicits, reviews, and evaluates grant proposals from North Carolina to the NHPRC. Conversely, it receives project grant funding from the NHPRC that it administers and re-grants to institutions in North Carolina. The SHRAB also conducts statewide studies and surveys to assess the conditions and needs of the state's historical records. Finally, the SHRAB offers educational programs, sponsors conferences and training workshops, and promotes archival awareness and cooperation throughout North Carolina. Over the years, the SHRAB has proven highly successful in sponsoring statewide examinations of North Carolina's historical records. Thornton W. Mitchell, former state archivist, prepared the first needs assessment study in 1983. One of the principal outcomes of that study was the formation of the Society of North Carolina Archivists to facilitate communication and cooperation across institutional boundaries.
A second needs assessment initiative a decade later produced To Secure Our Legacy: The Future of North Carolina's Documentary Heritage (1993) by then-state archivist David J. Olson. Among the recommendations of the conference that generated the report was a re-grant program to help records-holding institutions cope with what Edwin C. Bridges of Alabama in 1983 had labeled an "endless cycle of poverty." A survey of those institutions showed a multitude of problems, including insufficient staff, limited space, parsimonious funding, and inadequate conservation of records.
Rebecca McGee Lankford of Records Services helping to recover records in the Princeville, North Carolina, Town Hall on October 13, 1999, after Hurricane Floyd. Photograph courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History.
In November 2001 the SHRAB held its second statewide conference. Charting Our Future (2002) by Boyd D. Cathey, an archivist at the North Carolina State Archives, recorded the proceedings of the conference. Whereas the 1993 report had recognized the dawning (not to say daunting) revolution in records management created by the computer, by 2002 the full impact of electronic records and digitization had shaken the archival world. Yet old problems persisted. Staff training and development continued to pose irreducible challenges. One could not ignore the investment in human capital to sustain archives and records institutions.
Perhaps the most important accomplishment of the North Carolina SHRAB in recent years, growing out of the 1993 conference, was the Local Records Educational Assistance Program conducted between 1996 and 1999. That program, supported by two $50,000 grants from the NHPRC and $50,000 in matching funds from the State of North Carolina via the Friends of the Archives, Inc., provided $150,000 in re-grants to North Carolina institutions with records holdings.
The program had two component parts. The re-grant component was directed at three major groups: units of local and county government; historically black colleges and universities, as well as other academic institutions; and local libraries, museums, religious institutions, and other historical organizations. The re-grants also addressed three subject areas: preservation and reformatting projects affecting both traditional documents and newly created electronic records; institutional support to enhance internal operations, management, and staff training; and short-term consultancies to offer assistance in creating or strengthening records management programs.
Without repeating each successful re-grant project from 78 proposals, 30 of which were funded, a few examples might suffice:
- The North Carolina Library Association conducted a series of five daylong workshops across the state to deal with the problems of special collections. A total of 173 persons attended, representing historical, library, and genealogical organizations in 57 of the state's 100 counties.
- A re-grant to the Halifax County Register of Deeds enabled that historic rural county to preserve 10 fragile grantor/grantee indices, 1732-1904, and 3 marriage registers, 1867-1903.
- North Carolina Central University in Durham hosted a training seminar in records and archival management for administrators, archivists, and records managers at historically black colleges and universities.
- Western Carolina University used its re-grant to microfilm, index, annotate, and make available electronically the extant copies of the Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper published from 1828 to 1834. The newspaper served as the organ of the Eastern Band of Cherokee before the Cherokees' forced removal to Oklahoma along the "Trail of Tears" in 1838.
A series of teleconferences and cable television programs broadcast by the North Carolina Agency for Public Telecommunications (APT) comprised the second major component of the Local Records Educational Assistance Program. The NHPRC furnished $31,200 for this component. Among other topics, the programs offered advice on researching family history, including black genealogy; the management of electronic records; and perhaps most significantly, "Recovering and Restoring Heirlooms."
The latter program aired in the fall of 1999, 3 weeks after the most devastating natural disaster in North Carolina history, Hurricane Floyd. The panelists for the program included document and furnishing conservation specialists from the then-North Carolina Division of Archives and History, the North Carolina Museum of History, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and Etherington Conservation, Inc. Audio portions of the program aired on the North Carolina News Network (radio), while a web site was linked nationally to the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and the National Archives and Records Administration. A full report on North Carolina's Local Records Educational Assistance Program is available in A Legacy Preserved (2000) by Boyd D. Cathey.
Entering a new century, the North Carolina SHRAB still has much work to do. The Local Records Educational Assistance program revealed a persistent need for staff training at all levels. The SHRAB received 205 requests from 165 entities with records holdings. Nearly half of those entities lacked archival or preservation programs and employed no professional archivist or records manager.
Not surprisingly, technology has made an enormous impact on most records-holding institutions for good and ill. If the abolition of an "endless cycle of poverty" has not been achieved, a dual challenge now confronts archivists and records managers. While managing and maintaining traditional paper documents, photographs, microfilm, and video- and audiotapes, they now must confront new media that change seemingly every few months. Without documentation, the scholars say, there is no history. What documentation and in what form will this generation pass on to future generations? Only through collaboration and cooperation can archivists and records managers hope to bring order to the mountains of data endemic to the Information Age.
R.D.W. Connor had a gift for aphorisms. Early in the 20th century he inserted into the third biennial report of the North Carolina Historical Commission an adage as resonant today as it was a century ago: "A people who have not the pride to record their history will not long have the virtue to make history that is worth recording."
Dr. Jeffrey J. Crow is the Deputy Secretary of the Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, and Coordinator of the State Historical Records Advisory Board.
