Statewide Partnerships

The Vermont Historical Records Program’s (VHRP) current statewide initiatives include exploring the feasibility of developing a collaborative digital repository for Vermont’s historical records and other cultural heritage materials. The Vermont Historical Society, in partnership with the VHRP and the Vermont Department of Libraries, was awarded an Archives Collaboratives grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). In 2022-2023, we began working together on this planning grant and submitted a proposal to build a statewide platform for preserving and providing access to the digitized and born digital assets of our state. We are awaiting word on funding and potential implementation. If you work with historical records and would like to participate, please be in touch. 

The VHRP, along with seven partner institutions, is also involved with our current digital asset discovery portal, the Green Mountain Digital Archive (GMDA). As a service hub of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the materials aggregated in the GMDA are also accessible through the DPLA portal. We work to raise awareness of the existence of the GMDA and to encourage Vermonters of all ages to use it for research – and for the fun of it! 

The VHRP is also actively involved in the Collections Care and Conservation Alliance (CCCA), a network of conservators and preservationists that seeks to support new professionals and to improve collections care by providing information and education to individuals and organizations responsible for preserving art, artifacts, and historical records. The CCCA regularly offers low or no-cost trainings in collections care topics. 

In 2019, in partnership with the Vermont Arts Council and with the involvement of dozens of Vermonters passionate about emergency preparedness and response, the VHRP formed the Vermont Arts & Culture Disaster and Resilience Network (VACDaRN), part of the national Alliance for Response network. VACDaRN’s steering committee provides resources and training in readiness and in how to respond in the event of an emergency to mitigate the impact of disasters and ensure that our communities recover quickly. This effort was funded by a grant from the Performing Arts Readiness Project.  

The VHRP was also involved with the Vermont Suffrage Centennial Alliance (VSCA), formed in 2018 to commemorate and celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage and to acknowledge its incomplete legacy. A related project entailed serving as the Vermont coordinator for the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, which crowdsourced biographical sketches of grassroots suffragists, including about 70 Vermont women.