Collections

McLeod County Historical Society uses Past Perfect Museum Software on its network computer system, like many small historical museums. In the last three years we have been adding a tremendous amount of digital media, i.e. photos and recordings, to the system. This has created some storage and backup problems for us. My board would like to explore the option of offsite memory storage, and was wondering if any other organizations have done this or have looked into it. 

Thanks,
Lori Pickell-Stangel
Executive Director

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A popular concern with colleagues around the state has to do with handling large collections. Sometimes that collection is new as discussed in Digital Windfall, and sometimes the collection has been sadly neglected for far too long. In either case if a historical organization is to preserve the collection, that collection needs to be made accessible to the public. For those less experienced in processing large collections, sometimes both the unknown and the magnitude can be daunting. What words would you use to coach someone through a large cataloging project? What tried and true procedures to guide you do you use?

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Recently the Grants Office fielded a call from a county historical society considering a grant for an exhibit that would include a SMART Board. That recalled to mind the wonderful and nationally award-winning exhibit “Eating Out in Clay County” and the Clay County Historical Society. For that exhibit staff included blank notebooks wherein a visitor could respond to the exhibit as prompted by a question. The SMART Board would allow for the same kind of interaction electronically.

On the web, the Minnesota Historical Society recently began using Write on the Record, or WOTR (pronounced “water”), to enable visitors to annotate digital content, much like a reader of this blog can respond to the blog. For example, a researcher can annotate a database record using WOTR to let other researchers know of potential errors in the original, without altering the original record.

It’s encouraging to see how repositories of public trusts now more openly trust the public to add to the overall record. Your thoughts? What are ways that the public can add content by interacting with a local historical organization’s product?

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Donations of large photo collections, particularly those from studio photographers, often come with only a smattering of images identified. What does your organization do to get unidentified photographs identified?

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How many of this blog’s readers have emergency disaster plans for their museums? If you do, where did you start? How did you create a plan that covers every eventuality? Or does your plan just cover the most likely disaster scenarios?

Mary Warner

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Minnesota has roughly 1,800 townships, the most local unit of government. Each of those townships over time has kept record of its proceedings and details that describe the history of each one. They often contain genealogical data useful to family history researchers, and information about roads and bridges that consultants need to complete reports for state and federal projects. These records have a tremendous potential for researchers on numerous projects.

However, these records are often the most endangered in the state. Many local historical museums report finding township records in haymows, under kitchen sinks, buried in the back of closets, in remote township halls subject to arson, and even sent to the dump. The large number of records would require much work for one organization to preserve them all. Therefore, several local historical organizations are helping to preserve township records.

The Renville County Historical Society in Morton has undertaken a project that could serve as a model to many organizations. It applied for and received a grant from the Minnesota State Grants-in-Aid program for the first phase of a project to microfilm all township records in the county through the year 2000. This way the information contained in the township records will be available to the public during regular hours in its research library. RCHS followed the example of the Milaca Area Historical Society that microfilmed several township record sets in its area. When RCHS is complete, it may be the first county with a complete set of microfilm records for its townships.

Another way that local history museums have preserved township records is to enter into an agreement with the State Archives to be the repository for local government records. For more information about these agreements, contact Charlie Rodgers at the State Archives.

In what ways are you working with township supervisors to promote the preservation of their official records?

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The transition from analog photography to digital has produced a windfall for local historical organizations. Many newspapers across Minnesota have donated their file photos to their local historical organization when switching to digital formats.

One result is that an invaluable source of historical data is now, potentially, available to the public in any number of research libraries. Alexander Ramsey, in his first address to the Territorial Legislature in 1849, called newspapers the “daybooks of history.” Editors of local newspapers are often among the most mindful of historical significance in recording events as they happen, and now are looking at the long term preservation of their meticulously recorded photograph files.

However, these donations do not come without a number of issues. First, these files can be extensive. Time spent, most often by volunteers, is a cost as whoever is tasked with processing the collection could have spent time on any number of equally important projects. The temptation can be to just let the photographs sit, but the longer the collection goes unprocessed the longer it remains unaccessible to public. The volume of these files can also cost the organization in terms of storage materials it needs to house them properly. And, for those thinking of digitization, volume will play a role in the cost for that as well.

Second, in file photos there are often variations on images of the same event and only one of those photos actually made it into print. While it might be ideal to save them all, storage space at local history museums is often at a premium. Considerations sometimes have to be made for weeding out less useful iterations that the newspaper originally retained.

Third, hopefully when the newspaper paid for its photos, it also received copyright, which it then transferred to the historical organization. Without copyright, local historical organizations may become custodians for a collection it cannot really use. That too may weigh on the decision to catalog it, but then either an unusable collection or an uncataloged collection will only consume space without further the mission of the repository.

Last, while the contents of the photo may be described in the newspaper, often times only small clues are included on the physical photograph. This too is a barrier, though not insurmountable, to effective cataloging.

There are probably a number of other issues, but these four seem to be among the more common currently experienced by Minnesota’s local historical organizations.

If your organization has large newspaper photo files, what is your experience? How have you addressed these issues?

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The American Association of Museums chair, Carl Nold, has led Historic New England’s 36 museums to reconsider how each adds value to the community the museum serves. As a result, usership and membership have steadily increased. In the summer 2008 edition of “Historic New England Magazine,” Nold concludes that “it is not the nineteenth-century model of preserving a historic place and its contents that is outmoded” but rather “the way we have standardized the historic site experience, boxed it into a rigid tour, excluded the public from direct involvement with the collections, and tried to impose a single model on what are really diverse places and constituencies.”

Have we been using the right model all along? Is it just our methods that need to be revised? How do you connect with your individual community and walk the fine line between catering to specific needs and not re-inventing the wheel?

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The North Star Museum of Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting plans to produce a traveling exhibit that would be available to county and local historical societies beginning in the Boy Scouts of America’s centennial year of 2010.  The exhibit will be similar to the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service’s (SITES) “Museum on Main Street” program:

• easy-to-install
• general content that establishes a context for your own local collections.
• includes program ideas, educational materials, publicity materials,
• helps identify and make sense of your local Boy Scout collections, and more.

As with most of the exhibits available from SITES:

• a small rental fee will be charged, and
• the borrower will arrange for delivery, and
• pay incoming shipping costs. 

Space requirements are to be determined. The exhibit would be available for 6 or 8-week bookings. Since many details (content, size, time, cost, etc.) have not yet been decided, this is your opportunity to help us determine in what ways a traveling Boy Scout history exhibit would be the most useful to you and your community. 

If you are potentially interested in booking such an exhibit, please either e-mail Claudia Nicholson, Executive Director of the museum, or write to her at North Star Museum of Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting, 2640 E. Seventh Avenue, North St. Paul, MN  55109.

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Should a historical society ever refuse an estate bequest? If someone has willed possessions - photographs, books, cultural materials - to a Society, is it advisable to decline part or all of the materials, or is there the need to keep the peace by accepting the whole lot? How might the Society approach a conversation with the heirs about the decision-making process?

Deborah Morse-Kahn

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