About the Browns River Ledger
The Browns River Ledger is an independent journal about keeping records for the long run. We started it in 2024 for the people who look after records that are meant to outlast them: town and county clerks, recorders of deeds, records managers, small archives, historical societies, librarians and genealogists. Our subjects are practical ones. We write about records preservation, book and paper conservation, digitization and microfilm, archives and local history, and the information-governance policies that decide what gets kept and for how long.
Most writing on these subjects falls into one of two camps. Standards documents and professional literature are thorough but can be hard to apply in a two-person office with a leaky vault. Vendor material is easy to read but has something to sell. We try to work in the space between: specific enough to act on, honest about costs and limits, and with no stake in which product or service you end up buying.
What we publish
Two kinds of writing appear here. Reference guides cover the core subjects in depth and are revised as practice changes: preservation basics, conservation treatments, preservation copies on film and in digital form, storage equipment, funding, and legacy data and media. Articles take on narrower questions, such as removing old tape from a document, reading a nineteenth-century deed book, the first two days after water gets into a records room, or writing a retention schedule people actually follow. Every article is listed under Resources, and the guides start from our preservation guides page.
Who writes it
We are a small group of writers, each with years of hands-on work behind them.
- Margaret Thibodeau spent about twenty-five years as a town clerk and then a county recorder's deputy in northern New England, and writes about vital and land records, vaults, budgets, and what to do when things go wrong in a small office.
- Elias Brandt is a book and paper conservator in private practice who explains the chemistry behind tape, ink, leather and mold, and why so many home repairs make things worse.
- Priya Raman leads digitization and digital-preservation projects and covers scanning, microfilm, text recognition, metadata, file formats and storage, usually with a checklist attached.
- Dana Whitcomb advises local governments and mid-size companies on records and information governance: retention schedules, email, legal holds, disposition and legacy systems.
- Owen Lachance is the archivist at a small historical society and a long-time local history and genealogy volunteer, with a soft spot for deed books, old maps, and cemetery and church records.
Why "Browns River"
The Browns River is a small river in northern Vermont that runs down from the western slopes of the Green Mountains to join the Lamoille. We borrowed its name because this project grew out of small-town records work in New England, the kind done in town offices with a counter, a vault and shelves of heavy old books. It is a place name, not a company name, and we chose it for what it suggests: something local, unhurried and lasting.
Independence
The Ledger doesn't sell anything. We don't offer conservation treatment, imaging, data conversion, storage products, training or consulting, and we don't take on conservation work of any kind. No vendor sponsors our articles or sees them before publication, and we don't accept payment for coverage. When we mention a standard, a technique or a type of equipment, it's because we think it will help you, not because anyone asked us to.
The brownsriver.com address was used years ago by a records-preservation business. The Ledger has no connection with that company or with any other organization that held the domain before us, and nothing on this site speaks for them.
Editorial standards
- Practical first. Every piece should help someone make a decision or do a job better. Where a recognized standard applies, we name it. Where practice varies by state, we say so and point you to your state archives.
- No invented numbers. We don't publish statistics we can't stand behind. When we give a range, we present it as experience rather than data.
- Know the limits of advice. Treatment of valuable or fragile records belongs with a qualified conservator. We explain what the work involves so you can commission it well, not so you can attempt it at the kitchen table.
- Corrections. When we get something wrong, we fix it and note the change on the page. If you spot an error, tell us.
Getting in touch
We read everything sent through our contact form: corrections, questions, topic suggestions and stories from records rooms. We can't give legal advice or assess a particular item from a description, but we're glad to point you toward the right kind of help.