About this site

Discovery Virginia is a project of Virginia Humanities (www.VirginiaHumanities.org) to digitize and preserve the thousands of valuable assets it has produced in its forty year history, ranging from rare musical recordings to oral histories and grant-funded films. Called Discovery Virginia, this institutional repository provides a single web-based point of access to digital content across its programs. A major part of this project is the preservation of audio and video content stored on old media and in danger of being lost forever.

Virginia Humanities was begun in January 1974 with the formation of a committee of fifteen Virginians led by Edgar F. Shannon, Chairman, and Robert C. Vaughan, Executive Director. They initiated a series of ten public forums throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia on the humanities. These hearings led to the establishment in September 1974 of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy. Its purpose was to foster the development and public understanding of the humanities and to relate the humanities to current issues. The name of the organization was changed to Virginia Humanities in 2018.

The construction of this site would not have been possible without the significant contributions of Jeff Diehm, Tanner Greene, Mark Hawking, Jenna Warren, and Virginia Humanities staff members.

Questions? Please contact the repository manager Susan H. Perdue at discoveryvirginia@virginia.edu.