Moving Up The Trail: Photographic Collections Preservation and Digital Training at the Appalachian Mountain Club Library & Archives

FAIN: PG-280767-21

Appalachian Mountain Club (Boston, MA 02129-3740)
Rebecca Maxwell Fullerton (Project Director: January 2021 to November 2023)

The purchase of preservation supplies to rehouse a collection of 2,000 photographic prints and slides documenting outdoor recreation from before World War II through the 1970s. Highlights from this at-risk collection—a sub-collection of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s (AMC) 30,000 items chronicling its 145-year history—include images of wilderness camps, cabins, alpine mountain huts in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire, and some of the early recreationists who contributed to the outdoor recreation boom in the Northeast United States of the mid-twentieth century. Materials from AMC’s collection have appeared in programs and scholarly publications presented by PBS, the National Geographic Society, Yankee Magazine, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, and more. Environmental scientists have also used the collection to study climate change and to help protect the watershed of the Ammonoosuc River.

The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) Library & Archives will implement measures set out in a 2010 preservation assessment of our photographic collections and provide training for our Archivist in courses that address digital preservation and access. Firstly, the grant will support the purchase of archival housing supplies for sensitive photographic collections. Secondly, it will support our Archivist in completing the Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) Certificate Program offered by the Society of American Archivists.