~Sue Sellew, Secretary of the Sharon Historical Society
In this blog post, the author shares current activities the Sharon Historical Society are undertaking to make their collections accessible to the public.
Active Collections
In 2025, the Sharon Historical Society (SHS) was very fortunate to be selected by the Vermont Historical Society (VHS) to receive training as part of a “Cohort” of five historical societies: Bixby, Brookfield, Sharon, Thetford and Waterbury. VHS recognized the need and importance of small, volunteer run historical societies whose collections are often stored in historic structures, many without heat, and is providing us with training. This training is known as “Active Collections”.
The Sharon Historical Society’s mission has always been to collect the history of Sharon. Our collection has grown over the years, and one of the things we have learned is to deaccession items that do not support our mission. (A Deaccession Policy is part of the original SHS Bylaw and we have written a procedure to do it.) Another goal is to “Tier” the preservation of items in our collection so we spend our time and money on items that best tell the story of Sharon’s history. As a member of the Cohort group, we meet regularly to discuss common problems and help find solutions. We plan to keep our Cohort group active when this VHS grant ends.
Vermont Historical Society staff Eileen Corcoran and Hannah Kirkpatrick, who run the Activating 21st Century Local History project, wrote the article below about the 2025 Cohort project, of which Sharon Historical Society is a participant. The article ran in the September/October 2025 issue of Museum magazine.
Other Opportunities
We are looking for ways to engage the Sharon community. We have a collection of antique stereoscope cards with images of Sharon and are scanning them using equipment borrowed from the Vermont Historical Records Program (Mobile Digitization Unit). We plan to share these scans with the Sharon Elementary School and will discuss the images with their history classes.
The Town of Sharon has the distinction of having the oldest, continuously held Old Home Day celebration in the country, and our collection includes many photographs taken over the decades. As they are scanned, we will add these images to a website that we hope to build this winter.
Vermont Archives Month 