Tag Archives: archives

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Stearns History Center CMLE Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Steve Penick, archivist at the Stearns History Museum.

The Stearns History Museum’s (SHM) $4,000 storage project was partially funded through CMLE’s Extended Mini Grant Program, enabling staff to purchase shelves and archival storage boxes for collection materials.  Thanks in part to community partners, local Stearns County Lion Clubs, and a generous anonymous donor, the project’s goal of improving storage capacity and reorganizing our photographic collection has been achieved.  

Photo reorganization was the first component to be addressed.  SHM’s collection, around 25,000 images, had been stored on shelves in several different locations within the archives.  Staff assembled two 10’ storage units, bringing the entire collection into one space.  The remaining three shelves, have room for approximately 2,700 images, will be available for future growth.

Three units containing 30 shelves, space for 90 large archival boxes, are planned for new collections that previously did not have a permanent location.   A few examples include:  Eden Valley’s Marge Gruenes political correspondence and photographs (1980’s-1990’s), the Siefermann Family Papers (1890’s-1920’s) documenting their Richmond farm, and Senator Dave Durenberger collection, highlighting his formative Collegeville education years from St. John’s Preparatory and University.  Combined, some two dozen collections are prepared for data entry into our catalog and ready to be assigned a permanent location.

With the photograph reorganization, two empty units became available for incoming collections as they are received from donors.  Staff will have the opportunity to better organize and prepare these materials for collection storage. The space allows for 24 large archival boxes and up to a dozen mid-size ones.

The benefits of this shelving project are both immediate and long-term.  Patron and staff access to our resources has been improved, especially our photographic collection.  

Thanks CMLE for helping us make this happen!

Guest Blogger, Materials

Jessie Storlien Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Jessie Storlien, Archivist at the Stearns History Museum. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Stearns History Museum Buys Archival Supplies!

The Stearns History Museum Research Center had a backlog of items waiting to be processed. Space and supply constraints kept us from boxing and shelving new large collections. However, after receiving the CMLE minigrant, we were able to order the boxes and folders necessary to organize and process the large collections waiting in our overflow storage room. This, coupled with the construction of 75 more shelves in the archives will clear much of the unprocessed collections backlog.

Materials cover a breadth of topics from business and politics to women and children. Specific collections include: writers, Marilyn Salzl Brinkman and Jeannette Blonigen Clancy’s, interviews, research, and photos; World War I veteran Wesley Danneker’s photo albums, pilot log, and accompanying documents; materials from Electrolux upon its closing last year; United Cerebral Palsy of Central MN collection detailing their organization’s work in the area. Most of the materials are images, ephemera, documents, audio-visual materials, and other archival items.

To process the collections, materials will be filed, boxed, and cataloged. Each box will receive a unique number and a shelf location. The metadata for the collections will be recorded at the file level into our new library catalog when it goes live before the end of this year. This processing project will allow us to create more retrievability to the collections than is currently available, both physically and through recorded data. 

The focus of this project was accessibility for staff and patrons. This includes the ability to search for and find items that are in processing. Preparing collections to be entered into the new library catalog, and creating metadata that enhances searches in that system is also a priority. The broadest goal is to allow researchers to discover and obtain information from the collections at SHM. 

We want to honor our commitment to donors by keeping materials as preserved as possible, while also creating accessible information for researchers. The boxes and folders purchased through this minigrant will help us meet our strategic plan goals to preserve, process, and create accessible collections. Thank you!