The Latta Family Papers @ UNC

The Latta Family Papers
Special Collections, Atkins Library – University of North Carolina at Charlotte

1. Collection Principles

The Latta family are descendents of a 16^th C. Irish immigrant, James Latta, who became a successful merchant and farmer in North Carolina. The eleven letters dating from 1824 – 1830, help to offer a glimpse into the lives of James Latta and his family. They were donated to the Atkins Library in 1997 by a descendent of the Latta family. This fits into the collections’ aim to gather information on the history of North and South Carolina.

2. Metadata

In the exhibit each letter is transcribed detailing the addresses, narratives and signatures. Each transcript is interspersed with scanned images of the letter it matches. Other than the date of each letter no other metadata is closely linked to each item of the exhibit. A link to an inventory gives further bibliographic information about the papers as a group, including copyright and access issues.

3. Object Characteristics

Some information is provided about the digitization process for this exhibit. Specifically, the documents were scanned on a HP ScanJet 6100C flatbed scanner using Corel Photo-Paint 6 in a tiff format at 300dpi. It is also mentioned that the images viewed on the website are jpeg versions with a 100dpi resolution.

4. Intended Audience

Through its Manuscript Collection, the Atkins Library provides access to primary source materials pertaining to the Carolinas, particularly the Charlotte/Mecklenburg area. The major audience for this exhibit consists of the researchers and scholars of American studies of these states.

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