Tag Archives: preservation

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!

Preservation tips for photographs, documents, and digital files

Preservation Hall Bass Drum

by Sara Ring and Kate Brownrigg

Starting a project to organize and preserve your family photographs, documents and other content can be daunting. For Preservation Week this year, we’re passing along a few tips to point you in the right direction. Whether you need to learn how to house your photographs or other family keepsakes, or you want to protect your digital photographs and documents, we’ll offer some resources to get you going. Though this article focuses on personal preservation, many of these tips translate to caring for organizational content as well.

Tips for Preserving Photographs and Documents

When dealing with the personal treasures you have at home the first thing you may want to think about is how they’re housed now. Sometimes the easiest way to start protecting them is to organize them into acid free boxes. They can be appropriate for books, your family photos and documents, or any object you need to protect from dust and light. They’re available in a variety of sizes including box albums. You can further protect your photos and family documents in polyester or acid free sleeves before boxing.

Preserve your past; Think about the future!

Internet Archive logo and wordmark
As library people, we think about making our information and materials available to our communities every day.  Part of that work is a responsibility to think about making it all available to people in the future. The Web is like a living thing – it changes, grows, and pieces can die; thinking about preserving information needs to take into account those potential changes.

The Digital Preservation Network is already thinking about this, and helping to establish a safe system as well as best practices for you to preserve information. Their audience is academic environments, potentially producing unique material that may not be available elsewhere. As we have seen in the recent news, turbulent political changes can cause information to disappear or to be suppressed; the DPN can help libraries to preserve and share their information. Likewise, natural disasters can destroy buildings holding both paper materials and servers holding backups, ransomware attacks can happen, institutions can change or fall, and just bad luck and bad planning can destroy years of work. Having information available through something like the DPN will help to ensure its survival. Continue reading Preserve your past; Think about the future!

400-year-old Bible in college basement

1599-geneva-bible
Geneva Bible from 1599

This amazing story of discovery is proof that you never know what you may find when you are at the library!

At the Lewis & Clark College’s Aubrey R. Watzek Library in Portland, a rare piece of history was hiding, just waiting to be unearthed and appreciated. According to this article from The Oregonian, it was history major Sam Bussan that discovered the Geneva Bible from 1599 that was printed in London by none other than Queen Elizabeth I’s printer.

The article also includes an interview with Hannah Crummé, head of special collections and college archivist at the Aubrey R. Watzek Library. She explains the significance of the Bible in relation to religion and literature accessibility at the time it was printed: “Elizabeth I pitted her Protestant nation against the Catholic powers in Europe, particularly Spain,” Crummé said. “She allowed her subjects to study the Bible in their native English, making not just religion but the written word newly accessible to the majority of people.”

Want to see more of the discovered Bible? Watch this video from MSN for a closer look at the Bible itself, which features detailed drawings and music notations.

Ancient library wars!

ancient-greece
Libraries were trophies in the ancient world

 

People generally think of librarians and other library folk as mild-mannered,  maybe even reserved, people that are passionate about books, learning, and information in general. But historically, libraries used to be a source of high competition and conflict!

This article from Atlas Obscura details how several dynasties in the ancient world had a constant rivalry with each other over which kingdom had the best library collection. The biggest competition was between the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum (located in present-day Turkey). Kings poured their resources into preserving Greek culture and promoting scholarship, as well as acquiring ancient texts and writings to make their collections more valuable.

Of course, new ideas and interpretations of readings were important to keep libraries current and thriving. The article describes how competition to attract and keep scholars in libraries grew so fierce that the treatment of scholars became similar to today’s world of professional athletes: “Much like how athletes are drafted to rival teams in today’s sports, libraries “attracted scholars by offering one better wages than the other kings.” Sometimes, the kings took it a step further and actually put scholars in prison so they couldn’t take their intellectual pursuits to a different kingdom.

Today’s libraries may not have quite the same level of competition with each other, but they continue to be essential institutions in society, possibly because their value was discovered and preserved to such an extent in the ancient world.