The Hopkinton Town Library Presents:

The Contoocook Village Quilt

A Digital Library
[ Home ] [ About the Quilt ] [ About the Project ] [ Browse by Quilter ] [ Browse by Row ] [ Browse by Grid ] [ Browse by Title ] [ Browse by Subject ]

Project Overview This project was created to fulfill the course requirements of a graduate level course at Southern Connecticut State University ILS 655-70, Digital Libraries, Fall 2004, Dr. Yan Liu, Instructor. The project was thoughtfully suggested by the Director of the Hopkinton Town Library, Elizabeth Levy, and permission to use the images of the quilt and text materials was granted by the coordinator of the Contoocook Village Quilt project, Joan Holmes, as well as the library director. The Contoocook Village Quilt hangs in the Hopkinton Town Library's community room and is admired by many patrons and visitors of the library alike. The librarians are often questioned about the quilt, but the abundant information is not easily accessible. All of the un-cataloged paper materials are stored in binders and boxes in the local history collection. My primary goal is that upon digitizing and publishing this information to the Internet, I hope that the materials will be more accessible to the public. I was fortunate to have such a well-developed collection of materials from which to work. The materials included photographs of the quilt, which were the property of the Friends of the Bates Library-now incorporated into the Friends of the Hopkinton Town Library, a grid of the squares, essays written by each of the quilters explaining the significance of their squares, and additional texts written by the project coordinator, Joan Holmes.    This project will eventually become part of the Hopkinton Town Library's Website. Future additions to the collection will include digitizing additional texts concerning the project, adding historical and current photos of the buildings and places depicted in the quilt squares, and perhaps adding oral histories concerning the scenes to the digital library. I would like to thank Elizabeth Levy for suggesting the project, and Joan Holmes for her enthusiastic support of the digital library project.   Contact Information Bobbi Slossar can be contacted at the Hopkinton Town Library, P.O. Box 266, Contoocook, NH 03229 or 603-746-3663 or by email at bslossar@hopkintontownlibrary.org. Please see the Library's Website for more information. Mission Statement The Contoocook Village Quilt: A Digital Library was created for the residents of Contoocook and any persons interested in the history of the village or the effort required to create a community quilt. The mission of the project is to make the information about the quilt more accessible to all interested persons. Collection Policy This digital library is created from the quilt images and original text created by the quilters. Additional materials pertaining directly to the quilt or the buildings and scenes depicted in the quilt squares may be added at a future time. The Hopkinton Town Library holds items such as fabric samples, slides, and further text relating to the making of the quilt. Future updates to the digital library will include adding historical and current pictures as well as oral histories of the buildings and places featured in the quilt. Collection Maintenance This project will eventually become an active part of the Hopkinton Town Library Website. The digital library will be reviewed monthly to ensure that all links are loading properly. A timeline will be created to add historical and current photographs of the scenes depicted in the squares. Copyright Statement This digital library was created in the fall of 2004 in partial completion of requirements for ILS 655, Digital Libraries, a course at Southern Connecticut State University, taught by Dr. Yan Quan Liu.  This current site is a temporary site created for educational purposes only. The digital library will eventually become part of the Hopkinton Town Library's Website. At that time, additional changes and further permission from the creators may be required. No part of this digital library may be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the Hopkinton Town Library and the Friends of the Hopkinton Town Library. Organization of this Digital Library Organization The Contoocook Village Quilt is organized so as to support multiple methods of browsing. A grid depicting the location of each of the squares allows the user to browse the quilt according to how the squares are arranged. Due to the large size of the quilt image and the suspected lengthy download time, only small graphics of the quilt squares were shown by row to allow for better load time. The digital library also includes alphabetical listings of the quilter and the title of the squares. Furthermore the squares are browsable by subject. The subjects were broken down into squares that depict such Library of Congress Subject Headings such as: businesses, dwellings, railroad stations, public libraries; additionally, a unique subject heading of actives is used to group together the scenes portrayed in the squares. Each page that depicts a quilt square includes links to all of the browsing features, other squares with similar subject headings, as well as links to the prior and following squares as determined by the actual grid order. Metadata Scheme As each page only includes information about one quilt square, the page itself includes Dublin Core metadata describing the subject headings of the square and the name of the quilter. Technology The site was created using Microsoft FrontPage. The pictures were scanned using an HP Scanjet 3970 scanner. Adobe Photoshop was used to crop and save the images as JPEGs. Some of the text was scanned and optical character recognition software was used to read the pages; however, due to the poor quality of the paper pages, most of the text was keyed in to FrontPage. There are some slight differences between viewing the digital library in Microsoft Explorer and Netscape. In Netscape the mouseovers, a DHTML effect, do not work; this does not appear to affect the overall display of the page. Also in Netscape the text which describes a graphic does not display when the mouse is hovering over the picture. Credits All images and text are the property of the Friends of the Hopkinton Town Library and the Hopkinton Town Library. It should be noted that the two libraries serving the Town of Hopkinton were merged into The Hopkinton Town Library in 1998. The Friends of the Bates Library are no longer an independent entity. This page is best viewed in a higher screen resolution (1024 x 768) I hope you enjoy viewing The Contoocook Quilt: A Digital Library!