The Vermont-New Hampshire Labor History Society was founded in the 1970s by Bill Kemsley, Ben Collins, and others. In 1982 Vermont and New Hampshire split from each other, resulting in the Vermont Labor History Society. The society's objectives were to reveal how working people contributed to life in a democratic society, to direct labor-related materials to the proper repositories for preservation, and to make these materials available to educators and students. The Society exists as of this writing, but in a less active form since the 2005 death of Richard Hathaway of Montpelier, one of its most ardent supporters.
In 1979 the V-NHLHS undertook an ambitious project to survey every repository in Vermont to identify all labor-related materials and publish a bibliography of its findings. The Society obtained funding under CETA (the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973), through Vermont CETA and the Champlain Valley Work and Training Program, to pay four researchers for seven months to conduct this survey. Additional funding would be needed to complete the project's latter phases, including a survey of Vermont newspapers, the publication of the bibliography, and the collection of labor-related oral histories. The project's director was Gregory Bolosky, then secretary/ treasurer of the V-NHLHS. An advisory board consisted of prominent Vermont librarians and educators. It is doubtful that the survey project was ever brought to completion, because additional funding for it was still being sought in 1982, and no bibliography was ever published.
From the description of Vermont-New Hampshire Labor History Society survey papers, 1979-1980. (Vermont Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 153245447
