National Museum of the Morgan Horse Collection Is Now Online

The National Museum of the Morgan Horse (NMMH) owns more than 4,000 items in its collection, which includes but is not limited to books, manuscripts, photographs, paintings, publications, and a variety of Morgan horse-related artifacts like a racing cart, tack, clothing, even horse tails! Until three years ago, only a small percentage of the collection had been cataloged and there were no digital images of any of the items. It was imperative to thoroughly document the collections to have intellectual control to enable researchers and the public to have greater access to the collection. NMMH receives multiple research requests every week and without a clear understanding of the collection or an easy way to search, it is nearly impossible to answer these requests.

The process to digitize the collection has been long and involved; an old floppy disk that contained data was discovered and the company Collector Systems was hired to convert the data into a cloud-based system. A Go Fund Me campaign to digitize the collection and offset costs generated about $5,500.

The online collection does not yet have all of the collections posted, but to date hundreds of items currently are available. Visitors can search by artist name, title, as well as several other options. Collection galleries have been created including sales catalogs, promotional materials, horse photographs, stallion advertisements, and the USDA/UVM Morgan Horse Farm. One of the best features is you can view high-quality scans of photographs and archives, many that have never been on display!

To see the collection, go to https://gallery.collectorsystems.com/morganmuseum.