Author Archives: Joseph Watson

New Old Images of Middlebury

Recently, thanks to a tip from the friend of a friend we purchased some antique stereoscope views of Middlebury College and the Town of Middlebury in an online auction. (Shout out to the friend of Prof. Kevin Moss!)

Main Street Middlebury, looking northeast, before the great fire, circa 1880.
Notice the high meadows on Chipman Hill behind the church steeple.

Stereoscope cards hold two identical photographs, mounted side by side and slightly offset. When they’re viewed through a stereoscope viewer, a three dimensional image emerges.

A state of the art and thrilling parlor entertainment throughout the late nineteenth century, these rare images don’t need to be viewed in stereo to be appreciated online today.

Main St. looking west over Otter Creek after a fire obliterated most of the buildings in the picture above.
Old Stone Row viewed from the top of Kitchel House, 1881
Old Stone Row taken in front of Starr Hall, circa 1880
Old Chapel, circa 1880
We were initially thrown off by this house due to the view of Chipman Hill in the distance. A little sleuthing confirmed a 19th century snapshot of the Weybridge House
Weybridge House on the corner of College St. compared to today
The cards all appear to be from the studio of O. C. Barnes

Welcome Kaitlin Buerge to Special Collection in Davis Library

Special Collections & Archives is pleased to welcome Kaitlin Buerge ’13 to our team as Special Collections & Archives Fellow. Kaitlin first joined us as an graduate intern last year while she was completing her Master of Science in Information Science (MSIS) at the University of Albany. She graduated from Middlebury College with a major in English and American Literature.

Kaitlin will concentrate on cataloging unique archival collections in ArchivesSpace (go/aspace), and on improving access to the historic Abernethy Collection of American Literature. It’s great to have her on board!

Honoring Mario Cooper, ’77, on World AIDS Day

To mark World AIDS Day we’re sharing this film clip from the 1976 promotional film Middlebury College, a Chance to Grow which profiled Political Science major and student activist Mario Cooper. After graduating in 1977, Cooper went on to earn a law degree and became a key figure in HIV/AIDS advocacy after becoming HIV positive and witnessing the disproportionate effects of the disease in the African American community.

Though it may have once seemed like an unassuming profile of a passionate student, the clip can now be appreciated as an early view into the work of a determined activist who would later become a prominent figure in civil rights and AIDS advocacy movements. The footage and narration also poignantly show Cooper enjoying college life and friendships in a time before the AIDS epidemic changed his life and that of those around him.

Mario Cooper died in 2015 while in hospice care in Washington, D.C. His New York Times obituary can be read here, and a tribute to his work as an activist can be read on POZ, the social network for people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

 

Preserving Your Family Treasures

Preservation WeekMiddlebury College Library and Information Services does many things to preserve our collections.  For instance, we regularly backup up computer file servers, bind heavily used paperback books in the circulating collections, perform conservation treatments on rare books in Special Collections, and digitize photos and films in the College Archives.  Plus we spend a lot of time doing one of the most important things–  getting and keeping things organized!

To mark Preservation Week, we’re reminding you that it’s easy to take some basic steps to preserve your own important family collections.   Here’s a great web page that will tell you pretty much all you need to know!  http://atyourlibrary.org/passiton/preserving-your-treasures

And we love this short video, Why do Old Books Smell?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInTfrDnA   It reminds us that one of the most important things we can do is provide a good climate for our collections to slow the rate of organic decay.

100th Flanders Collection Cylinder Milestone!

The Northeast Document Conservation Center reports  that they’ve recorded one hundred of the two hundred and fifty cylinders in the Flanders Ballad Collection.  Quite a milestone!  See the recording system at work and listen to the hundredth cylinder in the NEDCC blog post here!  Take a look at some of the previous posts to learn more about this new sound scanning technology.

Irene Blog

“We Have Sound!”

“We Have Sound!” is the title of the IRENE/3D Seeing Sound Blog post from the Northeast Document Conservation Center when they announce that the new recording system is up and running. Middlebury College is fortunate to be part of a grant to reformat the wax cylinder recordings in the Flanders Ballad Collection. See the announcement here, along with more blog posts that follow.  You can even listen to some of the recordings!
NEDCC blog temp

Photos from the Archives showing the area around Twilight Hall

President Harry Truman once said “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”  Because the site around Twilight Hall and the Middlebury Municipal Building has recently been a topic of community conversation, we thought people might be interested in these photos from the Middlebury College Archives.   For more information on the history of the site and adjacent buildings, see pages 11 and 12 of A Walking History of Middlebury.

Click on the photos to enlarge them and see more detail.

View of Academy Park from Old Chapel.  Notice the building site of the Academy (now Twilight Hall) that replaced the previous wooden structure.

View of Middlebury from Old Chapel in 1867. Notice the building site of the Academy (now Twilight Hall) that replaced the previous wooden structure.

Academy Building in 1893, seen from the east end of the park between College and South Main St.

Academy Building in 1893, seen from the east end of the park between College St. and Main St.

Graded School in 1900 seen from College St. just west of Weybridge St.

Graded School in 1900 seen from College St. just east of Weybridge St.

The Academy Building in 1900 seen from the corner of South Main St. and Cross St.

The Graded School in 1900 seen from the corner of Main St. and Cross St.

Exhibit– A People’s History of Middlebury College: Student Resistance and Social Change

People's History of Middlebury Exhibit

In conjunction with an ongoing student project and J-term class, Special Collections has mounted an exhibit drawn from the College Archives–  A People’s History of Middlebury College: Student Resistance and Social Change.   From an uprising of students in 1822 asking for the dismissal of a professor, to the student strike in 1970 to protest of the war in Vietnam, through the formation of diverse activist groups like the Black Students for Mutual Understanding, the exhibit draws on primary sources in the College Archives.  These resources have been heavily used by Hanna Mahon ‘13.5 and Kristina Johansson ’14 as they’ve worked on the People’s History of Middlebury project over the past year, and used by the students in the J-term class that Hanna and Kristina are teaching.  See the exhibit in the front vestibule, and the Harman Periodicals Reading Area of Davis Family Library.

To listen to an audio recording of the related panel discussion “Middlebury in the 1960s” see this blog post.

People's History of Middlebury Exhibit

Also on display in the Davis Family Library Atrium–  Antique wooden toys produced in local toy factories.