This site has its origins in discussions between the Sheldon Museum and Middlebury College about the potential benefits of collaboration in making their most unique and fragile resources available in digital formats on the Web. The Vermont Historical Records Advisory Board provided funding in 2001 for a consultant to provide expertise and guidance on the possible digitization of photographic resources in the College Archives at Middlebury College. Later in the year the VHRAB provided additional funding to hire the same consultant, Eva Garcelon, to survey the visual collections in the Vermont Collection at Middlebury College and the Research Center at the Sheldon Museum. This report is available on the Web at http://maozi.middlebury.edu/SharingVTHistory/Report SM&MC Final 11-6-01.doc

     In 2002 Barbara Doyle-Wilch, Dean of Library and Information Services at Middlebury College, appointed a Digitization Committee to development the infrastructure for the implementation of digital projects at Middlebury College. The current charge of the committee is available on the Web at http://maozi.middlebury.edu/SharingVTHistory/CHARGE5-04.doc

     In 2003 the Center for Educational Technology provided a grant to hire student assistants at Middlebury College to digitize several local histories published in the 1800's and which have been long out-of-print. Libraries which own these titles often do not allow them to circulate and otherwise restrict access to them because of their condition, value, and scarcity. The resources which are initially included on this site are largely limited to Addison County.

     The following Middlebury College students have contributed to the conversion of printed and photographics resources to digital formats for addition to this Web site: Khairani Barokka, Theresa Chen, Tim Dybvig, Rafat Kapadia, Drew Miller, Siddharth Rajaram, Amrita Sarkar, Thomas Schmitt, Colleen Sullivan, Sinan Tanridag, and Madiha Tariq.

     Books and pamphlets were scanned and then converted to HTML format using Omni-Page Pro optical character recognition software. After the initial proof reading by student assistants a second proof reading was done by a staff member. The text of these books and pamhlets is searchable by using the Find command on Web browsers. Photographic images are scanned at 600 dpi and a master TIFF file is created for archival purposes, from which JPG and thumbnail files are created to add to the site.

We welcome suggestions for additional resources to add to this Web site and they may be sent to raum@middlebury.edu.