Project Overview: The mission of marin.org is to identify, develop and make available easily implemented network-based applications for public use and benefit. The continuing development of the Marin County Virtual Collections is a project that definitely meets this criteria. The Virtual Archive site uses current Internet technology to create a structure for archiving Marin County's history before it is lost.
			Project History: In the summer of 1998, with a grant from the Marin Community Foundation, an initial version of this Virtual Archive was created for the Marin County Fair. Using interactive web technology, volunteers archived and cataloged photographs in the "Wheels Of Marin" site illustrating the transportation history of Marin. Building on our initial venture, we would now like to expand the structure so that libraries, historical societies and collectors can easily preserve and archive their local history collections online for posterity. Once the different parts of Marin's history are processed into the Marin County Virtual Collections, researchers, students and other interested visitors will then have access to them both now and for generations to come.
	Structure: The Marin County Virtual Collections will be a central repository of a broad range of collections of Marin County History - for example the California Room Collection of the Marin County Library. Each collection may be segmented into various galleries - for the initial project the California Room Collection featured four galleries: Cars of Marin, Ferries of Marin, Trains of Marin and Wagons of Marin. Each collection will have a unique identity as defined by the managing organization or individuals. However, the information in the Marin County Virtual Collections will be cross referenced for research purposes. For instance, photos of cars belonging to the Kent Family might be in the California Room Collection while others might be in the San Anselmo Historical Society collection. A researcher interested in seeing all photos of the Kent family cars could do a broad search that would direct him/her to the different collections.
			Personnel: This project has been a collaborative effort from the beginning involving Marin people from the library, collector, volunteer and computer communities. This collective effort, from planning to implementation and maintenance, will need to continue to effectively preserve Marin's history for generations to come, marin.org can manage the project and build the structure only with the ongoing support of librarians, collectors, archivists and volunteers of all sorts to assist in the design, cataloging and management of the collections and galleries.