CLIR Grant Project

In 2021, Mount Mary University was awarded a substantial grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to fund 2 years of Fashion Archive digitization efforts. The CLIR grant team began adding digitized garments that fall using high-quality 360° image and zooming technology. This project founded the Digital Fashion Archive (DFA). Whenever possible, the entirety of Fashion Archive holdings for a given designer or notable personality was photographed. Mount Mary's CLIR funding concluded in May 2023.

Read more about the CLIR grant project in a story from Mount Mary Magazine (May 2022).

Four members of the grant team (Amanda, Marshall, Dan, and Laura) also published an academic article entitled, "History, Technology, and Hard Work: Digitizing a Large Garment Collection at a Small Institution," in the Journal of Digital Media Management in early 2023. The article is available by subscription only, but anyone can read the abstract (scroll to the bottom of vol. 11, no. 3).

This list indicates which collections in the DFA were digitized under the CLIR grant. Contact Library Director Dan Vinson (vinsond@mtmary.edu) for more details.

St. Mary's Academy & College Students circa 1924-1928

Source: Mount Mary University Archives

The Grant Team

• Dan Vinson, Principal Investigator

• Amanda Cacich, Curator/Stylist

• Marshall Lee, Photographer

• Laura Vavrosky, Archivist

Project Assistant

• Mary Safranski, Mount Mary Fashion student

Consultants

• Ashley Brooks, Fashion Department Chair

• Donna Ricco, Fashion Department Executive Fellow

• Bob Schwartz, Dean of the School of Arts and Design, and School of Business

Former Members

• Asma Dasan, Project Assistant

• Dan Scholzen, Archivist