Category Archives: Special

Guest Blogger, Special

CMLE Mini Grant: Photography Preservation at Stearns History Museum

This is a guest post written by Steve Penick, Archivist at the Stearns History Museum. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

What were your favorite takeaways or new things learned?

Perhaps the most rewarding part of the CMLE grant hinges on our ability to serve future audiences, not only within the museum, but beyond to the broader world.  This vision includes access to our collections, preservation aspects, and potential projects as defined within our Strategic Plan.

Various mediums may include online exhibits, social media, and published works. In its most utilitarian form, purchasing these archival supplies enables SHM to better preserve and access the Myron Hall Photographic Collection by reducing direct staff handling of these images.  It also creates an improved storage environment and an opportunity to assign a specific retrieval number on each negative sleeve.

These exciting initiatives ultimately reach the community we serve. Our library and archival mission emphasizes preserving images, creating more avenues for access, and as a vehicle to interpret the past.

  • Negative sleeves to preserve photos
    Negative sleeves
  • Negative sleeves and current storage boxes
  • Sleeves and negatives
  • The project!

As a result of purchasing these materials, can you identify and explain a few things you can use/apply to your work or practice?

Purchasing these archival supplies follows SHM’s preservation strategy.  This first step, in an ongoing practice to improve our collection storage environment, will increase the likelihood that these images are available for our audience decades into the future.

The project also ushers in related preservation plans such as digitization. Any future projects of this nature reduce the likelihood that negatives will be mixed up during scanning and processing. 

Combining all of these benefits, CMLE’s grant encompasses more than just archival supplies and their preservation advantages. It allows our grant to reach the community on a direct level now and well into the future.

Guest Blogger, Special

CMLE Mini Grant Report: Stearns History Museum


This is a guest post written by Jessie Storlien, Archivist at the Stearns History Museum. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

Collections that are benefiting from the new boxes.

As a result of purchasing these materials, can you identify and explain a few things you can use/apply to your work or practice?

The Research Center in the Stearns History Museum is currently processing a large influx of archival materials that have arrived within the last year.

The items include documents, photos, audio-visual materials, ephemera, and other archival materials. The collections range from the St. Cloud Herberger’s department store and the Rausch family of Cold Spring to Kollmann Monumental Works and the Herbrandson family of Brooten, among many other documents that have been collected or donated to the Archives.

The shipment arrives! A finished box in front.

Acid-free, lignin-free archival boxes allow us to properly store and preserve these materials. Since purchasing the boxes we have begun organizing and processing the new materials. The boxes help us continue to preserve and store 2D archival materials in a publicly accessible retrieval system.

This grant supports Stearns History Museum’s mission to connect people to the power of history and culture by collecting, preserving, and interpreting its historical and cultural resources. The storage boxes allow for improved access to our collections by staff and the audiences we serve.

Box tops, flattened boxes, and a finished box.

What were your favorite takeaways or new things learned?
There are many factors in creating accessibility in a library. Space, shelving, and storage containers all play an important part in processing and organizing new materials and collections.

The storage boxes Stearns History Museum ordered using the money we received from CMLE will allow us to continue making accessibility and conservation a priority at our organization by giving us a place to properly store processed collections. When stored in an ideal environment, collections are preserved for future generations of families and researchers.

Special, Visits

Minnesota’s Tribal Libraries: Red Lake Nation College’s Medweganoonind Library

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As you know, we are big fans of going to visit libraries! This is not our visit, but it’s so cool we wanted to share it with you. This write up is from the Minitex newsletter, by Cassy Leeport and Zachariah Miller!

An image of the main room of the Medwaganoonind Library at Red Lake Tribal College.

 

“The Medweganoonind Library, located inside Red Lake Nation College (RLNC), is the library for RLNC students and the Red Lake community as well as home to the Tribal Archives. It opened its doors on August 15, 2015 when the new college building was completed. Before this library opened, the closest public library was Bemidji Public Library, about a 45 minute drive from Red Lake.

In the past two-and-a-half years, the library has expanded its collection from about 1,500 to nearly 7,000 resources. The collection is made up of a large Native section (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biographies, and Language materials), children’s and YA sections, General Fiction and Non-Fiction sections, and the very popular DVD and Audiobook sections.

RLNC is currently in the process of acquiring independent accreditation. Because of this, the library’s priority is to ensure that student needs come first. This has involved setting up a computer lab and Learning Center connected to the library and providing information-literacy workshops to assist students with their college-level research and writing.

The biggest challenge over the past few years has been getting the word out to community members that this library is for them! In September, 2016, the Medweganoonind Library was awarded a two-year IMLS Enhancement Grant for $140,000 to focus library efforts on community building and community engagement within the library.

The library is currently staffed by two full-time employees, Cassy Leeport, Director of Library Services & Tribal Archives, and Jen Hart, Library Technician. The library is open 44-50 hours a week, depending on the schedule, and has a monthly calendar of events including beading classes, technology workshops, LEGO Club, and story times.

The library is open once each month on a Saturday to host a free community event. Some of these events have included a Grinchmas Candy Cane Hunt, Halloween movie & crafts, paper moccasin making, Dr. Seuss’ birthday, gift making for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and coming soon, Winter Storytelling.

Establishing a monthly calendar of library activities has really helped improve community usage of the space, and community patrons are the most frequent borrowers now! The big spike in community patrons has been very exciting for library staff. The library has added an average of six community patrons per week over the past year.

Although the library has seen steady growth and the future looks bright, we face the challenges that most tribal libraries do, such as sustainable funding. Being dependent on grant funding makes planning for the future difficult, but with the continued support of RLNC staff, students, and members of the Red Lake community, the Medweganoonind Library hopes to become a fixture of the community.”

CMLE, Special, Visits

Visiting the Benton County Historical Society!

 

We really enjoy visiting our member libraries and archives, and had such a great visit to the Benton County Historical Society. The outside of the building is deceptively small, and we had so much fun discovering all the treasures housed inside. The mission of the Benton County Historical Society is to “preserve the past and present history for future generations.” They have tons of resources available at their location for anyone wishing to research family or area history. Thanks to donations, original books and documents, microfilm, plat maps, audio history tapes and lots more, you can explore your family’s or your community’s history!

We were lucky enough to get a tour from museum volunteer Fred, who was full of interesting and surprising information about the Benton County area.

We were able to see the main area where research is done. There’s a computer that has a database where most of the resources are cataloged for easy access. They have microfilm, old newspaper clippings, binders of family history, as well as filing cabinets full of history of the community. Continue reading Visiting the Benton County Historical Society! →

Communication, Special

Learning About Library Associations: Special Libraries Association MN Chapter

Library science is an enormous field, home to every interest you could imagine! This means that there are many organizations out there for you to join, in order to connect with other people who share your professional interests.

So even if you work alone in your library, there are other people out there doing work similar to yours! Each week we will highlight a different library association for you to learn more about, and depending on your work, potentially join! You can also check out our page dedicated to Library Associations.

At CMLE we have some special libraries in our membership, and this organization is for them! (One of our special members is the Stearns History Museum and their archive. Read about our visit here!) Special libraries are an important part of our membership, and if you work in one, definitely check out the Special Libraries Association Minnesota Chapter!

From their site: “The Special Libraries Association Minnesota Chapter (SLA-MN) was founded in 1943 to share expertise and interests and to build a community to support the special librarians of Minnesota and the surrounding area. The chapter exists to provide these same opportunities and services to our members and partners.”

The SLA MN Chapter offers many programs, including several awards, professional development opportunities, and a mentorship program to encourage students and early-career professionals.

For information on membership, to read their Strategic Plan, or learn about the organization’s history, visit the SLA MN Chapter’s website.