Notes on Sourced and Suggested Readings

While this history has drawn from a wide diversity of sources, I've leaned most heavily upon information gleaned from the VCUL/AVCU annual meeting bulletins from 1957 onwards (those from the Bergengren era have sadly been lost, so that section is reliant on other sources). As such, in order to avoid overburdening the text with footnotes, I've chosen to omitted citations of quotes and information from those reports if it is clear in the text what year's report the information is from. For readers interested in digging into these sources, PDF files of the original reports will hopefully soon be posted on the history section of the AVCU's website (www.vermontcreditunions.com/).

Additionally, given that Joe Bergeron is still (very much) amongst the living at the time of writing, a good deal of the information in the chapter that deals with his tenure was gleaned from extensive interviews with him. I've tried to cross-check information from these interviews with other sources wherever possible, but the reader should be aware of the methodological difference between that chapter and those that precede it.

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For readers interested in further investigating the history of the credit union movement, a good starting point is the Moody and Fite's classic 1984 book, The Credit Union Movement: Origins and Development, 1850-1980. Based on an extensive reading of the CUNA archives, including the Bergengren-Filene correspondence, it remains the definitive treatment of the early history of the American Credit Union Movement. For those interested in a discussion of the American movement's last few decades, former CUNA speech-writer Paul Thompson is slated to publish such a book (the title TBD) in the summer of 2012.

If you're in search of a more international perspective on credit unionism, Canadian historian (and tireless promoter of co-operative studies) Ian MacPherson's 1999 Hands Around the Globe is a vital read, and Dr. MacPherson's other works on Canadian credit unions and cooperatives are extremely important resources for anyone interested in the history of the cooperative model. Finally, for a broad overview of the development of the cooperative movement in America as a whole, the most accessible introduction out there is John Curl's For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America.

Reviews of most of these books (and many others) by the author can be found at Credit Union History (http://cuhistory.blogspot.com) .