MESDA Announces Digital Partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In May 2009 the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem Museums & Gardens announced a multi-year partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carolina Digital Libraries and Archives (CDLA) to make MESDA’s research archives available to a global audience via the Internet.  The partnership will digitize the MESDA Craftsman and Object Databases, and the museum’s scholarly journal to create the core of an early southern material culture web portal. Access to the material will be free of charge.

The first step, already underway, is scanning the approximately 200,000 index cards that document nearly 80,000 artists and artisans working in the early South. At the same time we are digitizing the past 35 years of MESDA's journal, the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, and creating a model for publishing new issues exclusively on the Internet. The next step is to digitize the nearly 20,000 files with photographs recording objects made in the South. All three of those digital collections will come together in an integrated platform that will provide researchers with powerful search and navigation tools from any computer connected to the Internet, day or night, anywhere in the world.

In the future, virtual exhibits, publications, and curriculum resources from MESDA as well as peer museums and university programs in American history and material culture will be available on the portal.

Please stay tuned to MESDA.org for future developments.