We love to take field trips to visit our members. And this one was a fun one for us! Yes, it is always fun to visit our members – but this one had some unusual items in their collection that made it stand out a little bit.
It is located on the grounds of Camp Ripley, near Little Falls. You can check out their website right here. It’s filled with all sorts of information and content you can admire here, or prep for your trip.
(Note: we love it when our members have websites, or pages on their parent organization sites! It’s such an important tool for organizing your resources and connecting with your community. If you need some help getting started on yours, we have info on it here.)
The library is a small building across a plaza from the museum, and you can definitely admire both buildings while you are there. And you can ponder the challenges of collection development and display when your collection includes items such as a OH-38A Kiowa Helicopter! Libraries of all sorts are adding more interesting material to their collections, but a plaza filled with helicopters and other military machinery will be a little unusual in most collections.
When you get inside, it does look more like a typical library. You can see Ryan Welle, the Archivist and Librarian, ready to circulate some books from the collection.
You can see the cataloging system they have developed. A lot of small libraries, with specialized collections, develop their own catalog that makes sense of the collection and makes it easier for your community to find material.
This is a terrible picture of a great addition to the library! From their website: “Along the east wall of the library is our 30-foot WWI America mural featuring 100 notable individuals from the era of different backgrounds, interests, ethnicities and orientations. Recently completed by local Veteran David Geister, it was inspired by the even larger, century-old Pantheon de la Guerre on view at the National WWI Museum in Kansas City. ” They keep a list of all the people in this mural – and you will be very surprised to learn about all the people who appear here, including Walt Disney, the Mayo brothers, and all sorts of Minnesota veterans.
We have so many great collections, materials, and programs across our 300+ members! We really enjoy checking in with everyone, to see how you are doing. You can read about our other field trips to visit members here. And if we haven’t been to visit your library yet – let’s make this happen! Email us at admin @ cmle.org, and let’s set up a day that we can come over to admire your stuff!