ACRL New England Chapter News Online
Winter 2001, No. 92

Connell B. Gallagher
University of Vermont

The University of Vermont Libraries has mounted its first digitized
research collection at http://sageunix.uvm.edu/%7esc/g pmorc.html. The
project, to digitize the George Perkins Marsh papers, was funded by the
Woodstock Foundation over a three year period beginning January 1, 1997.
The finished project includes 535 fully annotated documents from the Marsh
papers presented as both facsimilies and transcriptions, together with
topical Web pages that introduce the material. George Perkins Marsh,
1801-1882, was a renaissance scholar at a time when scholarship was
fragmenting into specialties. He was a lawyer, born in Woodstock, Vermont,
a diplomat, serving as U.S. Minister to both the Ottoman Empire (1849) and
to the Kingdom of Italy (1861-1882), a three term congressman from Vermont
(1843-1849), a linguist, an entrepreneur, and Vermont Commissioner of
Railroads and Fisheries (1857-1861). His book "Man and Nature" (1864) has
been called the "fountainhead of the conservation movement." The
collection includes documents on Marsh's Vermont activities; on tariffs;
the Free Soil Party, the Fugitive Slave Act and slavery in general; the U.S.
Civil War; sculptor Hiram Powers; and the creation of the Smithsonian
Institution.