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!