Middlebury Nonprofits and Charities

Libraries have always shined when sharing was the topic of conversation. Written in stone above the entrance to the Carnegie library in Oakland, Pennsylvania, it says, "Free to the People". The Green Mountain Library Consortium and its participating libraries are taking sharing and free resources to the next level with their digital lending library, ListenUpVermont (LUV). As a librarian at a participating library, Milton High School, it is awesome to see how and when LUV is used. The tenacious readers now have access to almost 10,000 ebooks and audiobooks 24/7/365 from any remote spot that they hope to read. Project Gutenburg started this revolution back in the nineties, getting as many novels digitized as possible. Now through GMLC and the Overdrive platform digital lending and reading is a reality. eReaders, phones, and tablets all allow for easy reading whatever your situation. If you want a book and the brick and mortar building is closed, use LUV. If you want a book and can't get a ride to the public library, use LUV. If you are away on vacation and can't use the public library in the region you are in, use LUV. Anytime, anywhere, LUV has books available for you to read.

I'm an anthropologist with special interest in folk song. <br>It took a long time for Vermont to be recognized as a place where important folklore was to be found. When the first major collection of vernacular songs from Vermont’s Atwood family was published as part of the Schirmer “American Folk-Song” series, the major ballad scholars, such as Cecil Sharp, were still scouring southern Appalachia thinking that was where the old ways of singing had survived. And they had, but the 1919 book by Edith Sturgis and Robert Hughes showed that Vermont was also a vital place to look. This was shown in the 1930s when Helen Hartness Flanders took up her work. <br> <br>The impressive value and the generosity of the Vermont Folklife Center was revealed to me when I started a project to explore the place of the Atwoods’ repertoire in American singing history. The workers at the VFC immediately supplied me with recordings made by Margaret MacArthur in the 1960s of the son of James Atwood, the central figure collected by Mrs. Sturgis. They gathered together and opened up all of the materials they had with anything related to the Atwoods or Sturgis’ and were gracious and helpful in enabling the research to continue. Thus far it has resulted in several descendants of Edith Sturgis becoming involved, searching family dwellings for papers, photographs and files connected to their grand-mother’s activities. One grand-daughter has reprinted the original 1919 book of the Atwoods repertoire and included a set “Poems” written by James Atwood about his friends and neighbors and documenting life in Dover, Vermont from about 1880 to 1920. <br> <br>All of this is in addition to a CD recording of the Atwood songs, the several concerts presenting the songs and verse, and accompanied by projected photos and talk about the fascinating set of characters involved in preserving this invaluable Vermont lore. <br> <br>My story, of course, covers only one example of the legacy of the Vermont Folklife Center in saving and restoring these irreplaceable gifts back to the people of Vermont. We are very fortunate to have such a talented and devoted crew of workers in charge of these crucial parts of Vermont’s heritage. <br> <br>Anthony G. Barrand, Ph.D. <br>University Professor Emeritus and <br>Professor Emeritus of Anthropology <br>Boston University <br> <br> <br>