Big Heavy World & Fletcher Free Library to Archive VT Music with Local Heritage Grant

Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership funds catalog digitization; connections to other library systems; accessibility.

BURLINGTON, VT — A public archive of Vermont-made music will be improved with a $5,000 Local Heritage grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership. The grant was awarded to Big Heavy World in support of collaborative work to expand the digital archive catalog; publish it interactively to the Internet; and ensure the catalog is searchable by other library systems while incorporating accessibility features.

The archive of physical recordings contains more than 3,000 items gathered since 1996, including CD, cassette, digital audio tapes, vinyl records, books, and videos. The collection was relocated to the Fletcher Free Library in 2014. Improvements to the archive catalog will be directed by Librarian Christine Webb. Expansion of the catalog data will be accomplished by volunteers and Library Science interns. Nathan Haskins of Haskins Information Technology, LLC, http://haskins.it, will program the accessible interactive online catalog.

Big Heavy World Executive Director James Lockridge said, “Big Heavy World has been dedicated to preserving and promoting the music of Vermont for 20 years, and aspires to make our state proud of the breadth and diversity of our cultural legacy. This collaboration with the Fletcher Free Library and Haskins I.T. demonstrates how working together is the Vermont way to accomplish the most ambitious goals of the community.”

Rubi Simon, Director of the Fletcher Free Library said, “The library embraces the opportunity to work with organizational partners to address the cultural needs of our community, and this project not only adds to our ability to serve but also catalyzes community participation that will enrich and educate. We are delighted to be on a leading edge of digital cultural preservation and to be accomplishing it with such dedicated allies.”

The improved digital archive catalog will reside on the Civic Cloud, a noncommercial community cloud platform built collaboratively by a consortium of local nonprofits to demonstrate next-generation Internet applications. The Big Heavy World web site, http://www.bigheavyworld.com, is hosted on the Civic Cloud, which was constructed in part with servers donated by Google.

About Big Heavy World: Big Heavy World is an independent, volunteer-staffed nonprofit music office serving the music community of the State of Vermont inclusively since 1996. Contact James Lockridge, jim@bigheavyworld.com, (802) 865-1140. http://www.bigheavyworld.com

 About The Fletcher Free Library: A department of the City of Burlington, the FFL is an urban public library serving the Greater Burlington area. Founded in 1873 with a gift from Mary L. Fletcher, it has occupied the expanded Carnegie building at 235 College Street since 1904. The library collection includes more than 143,000 items, and programs of the library responsively serve the evolving cultural and educational needs of its community. Contact Rubi Simon, Library Director, rsimon@burlingtonvt.gov, (802) 865-7214. http://www.fletcherfree.org

About Haskins I.T.: Nathan Haskins brings eleven years of web design and development experience and seven years of database development to the archive programming task. Haskins won Third Prize in the 2013 MyWebGrocer hackathon by coding a music archive audio player for the Big Heavy World web site. Haskins I.T. clients include Suncommon, Vermont Council on Rural Development, and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Contact Nathan Haskins, Nathan@haskins.it, (401) 419-2445. http://haskins.it

About the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership: The CVNHP is a national heritage area including the interconnected waterways of Lake Champlain, Lake George, the Champlain Canal and portions of the Upper Hudson River in Vermont and New York. The region is the ancestral homeland of Algonquin and Iroquois peoples and, over the past 400 years, has played a vital role in the establishment of the United States and Canada. The CVNHP is one of only 49 national heritage areas in the U.S. This designation allows the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) to provide financial and professional support to communities, museums and organizations that work to interpret and promote the region’s history and culture. Contact Jim Brangan, jbrangan@lcbp.org, (802) 372-3213 x213, http://www.champlainvalleynhp.org

Image (2376 × 1584 pixels, 3MB JPEG): Bennington College student Julian Parr digitizes Vermont music at Big Heavy World. Photo by James Lockridge/Big Heavy World. http://www.bigheavyworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/BHW-Archive-Julian-Parr.jpg

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