Continuously contributing to the local and state communities via electronic access, ibiblio.org is one of the world’s first Web sites and largest “collections of collections” on the Internet. It is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics and cultural studies.
The site provides 24 hour a day, seven days a week access to resources for anyone who has a Web browser. ibiblio.org allows access to thousands of sites including a section specific to North Carolina resources. A sampling of just some of the not for profit organizations accessible through ibiblio.org include:
- Orange County North Carolina recordings provide access to audio recordings of commissioners, local School meetings and more.
- EMpowerME, Orange County services available to victims of interpersonal violence.
- Carolina Transportation Program which focuses on “transportation planning, transit, non-motorized transportation, and land use.”
- Nourish International “sets up fundraising business enterprises to finance and implements sustainable food sources for communities.”
- Chapel Hill Public Arts Commission is a non-profit commission that promotes awareness and understanding of the arts.
- The Carrboro Poetry Festival “contains information about the Carrboro Poetry Festival, and features a comprehensive mp3 audio archive.”
- Plant Information Center - “a searchable database with digitized herbarium specimens” (developed by SILS faculty and students)
“For over 20 years, ibiblio has hosted and fostered information sharing for not for profit organizations, locally, regionally and statewide,” said Paul Jones, director of ibiblio and clinical associate professor at SILS and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “We currently host over 150 not for profit sites for North Carolina.”
ibiblio.org was founded as sunsite.unc.edu in 1992 with the support of Sun Microsystems. In September of 2000, ibiblio.org was formed as a collaboration between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s MetaLab, formerly known as SunSITE, and the Center for the Public Domain. At UNC at Chapel Hill, ibiblio is supported by SILS, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Information Technology Services, the UNC at Chapel Hill Libraries and the Office of the Executive Chancellor and Provost. ibiblio is housed in the School of Information and Library Science located in Manning Hall.
