Mike Worcester at the Cokato Museum got a Museums for America Grant and he and I have been talking a lot about it. I believe that IMLS would be thrilled to get quality proposals for small projects from museums around the country. We were not sure why there seems to be a dearth of such projects, but our suspicion is that most small museum directors look at the guidelines and throw up their hands.

Admittedly, the federal grant application process has gotten infinitely more complicated, and the MFA guidelines are not written very clearly. But I do think that it is possible that small museums have all kinds of projects, the money for which they could apply. I would love to know how many people have looked at the MFA guidelines, and what the bars are to them applying.  And what is up with no MAP grants being given in Minnesota this year? Has everyone had one?

For my part, I hate to see so many institutions getting the maximum, when that money could have so much more impact if it was just spread around a little bit more.

Claudia

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?

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?

Three recent articles on MinnPost highlight what journalists suggest are 150 things that happened in Minnesota that would have been nice if they had not taken place. What do local historians have to say about this list? What value might there be in commemorating the ugly and the disasterous? How complete is this list? What events have been left off that you would add? (Such as the 1998 St. Peter Tornado) How do you approach telling difficult stories?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3