Orange County NC Website
plays into this too, the architecture of the land, the built environment, or cultural <br />landscape. Old /historic photos will be helpful to bring topics to life. <br />Buildinq Narratives: All noted the issue of entries being dry and boring, just building <br />descriptions. We want to avoid that. SHPO surveys and updates like ours require an <br />inventory entry, written according to National Park Service standards driven by National <br />Register nominations. These are inherently dry and descriptive. Our consultants are <br />committed to finding and telling the story wherever possible. What is important about this <br />building or person? Why is it in the book? Our policy will be to not have dry entries. The <br />HPC will have a chance to review and edit them. There will be a need for members to help <br />with research, finding the extra stories. Staff will seek volunteers for this. <br />Glossary: members agree that a good glossary is valuable. Many of the existing ones <br />depict high style architecture, and don't really apply to our vernacular properties. There is <br />interest in a visual glossary, one that informs and is relevant. SHPO convention calls for <br />placing these at the end. There were ideas about icons, or keys that give readers a clue. <br />Index: This is a key element of a serious book. The challenge is to find a balance point in <br />the level of detail and how to cross - reference. Members like the idea of using bold type or <br />italics to indicate where a feature is illustrated. <br />Organization of property entries: Discussion followed about how to organize properties <br />within the catalog. Are they arranged by townships or chronologically? Townships are a <br />convenient, albeit arbitrary way to organize the catalog. This is probably a default mode. <br />Do you arrange the same way within each township, for example, show all houses, <br />churches, stores, and barns in one township, then do the same again for the next <br />township. Can icons or other graphic symbols be used to show different building types? <br />Or is that more geared to online offerings? We have to remember, the local people who <br />help pay for these books, donate money, pay taxes etc. are really most interested in their <br />corner of the world. This is perhaps our core market. The townships are different in subtle <br />ways, say in Cedar Grove township, they made a lot of money in tobacco. There is a lot <br />more dairy farming in the southern part of the county. There may be a better way but we <br />have not seen it. We should provide an overview of each township, its soils, its economy, <br />etc. Members are OK with the township organizational model in general terms. This puts a <br />lot of pressure on the front section, to really make that set the stage, present the context <br />for the townships. We went from hunter gatherers who move all across the land, to using <br />the land, not moving, settling down in one place, and then soil mattered a lot. Lawyers <br />certainly left their mark too. Tribal movements were extensive. Many of their methods had <br />been changed by early contact and trade patterns with the French. <br />Selection of properties: There was general agreement that we will seek to present a broad <br />sweep of our resources, not just the finest and most photogenic, but include the utilitarian <br />and farm buildings. We will follow the SHPO geographical convention rather than the <br />chronological approach. There was more discussion about the pros and cons of using <br />images to show the distribution of building types and styles in each township, perhaps <br />keyed to maps. Is there a role for the glossary section to handle some of this? Maybe this <br />is a way to avoid repeating the same things over and over again. Whatever we do should <br />translate readily into a digital format. The better books attempt in different ways to connect <br />the dots for average readers, for example show an example of an Orange County <br />bungalow, then illustrate the same house as shown in the Sears catalog. The history <br />section could include the history of the architectural development of the whole county, <br />then when you go to each township, you have covered that to some degree in the general <br />history. The first step of creating the book will be to develop a detailed outline, with a lot of <br />discussion with the consultants about how to organize this. The challenge is to create a <br />book that could become digital, then be picked up by a traveler who could plot out a route <br />3 <br />