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Lanesboro Historical Museum awarded $10,000 grant to catalogue collections

December 17, 2014 | In the Press

From Fillmore County News (http://www.hometown-pages.com/Content/News-Leader/NL-news/Article/Lanesboro-Historical-Museum-awarded-10-000-grant-to-catalogue-collections/12/21/56427)

The Minnesota Historical Society recently awarded the Lanesboro Historical Museum a $10,000 grant to catalogue the inventory of the museum's main floor. With an outdated database and limited accessibility for locating a particular piece of history, this grant will allow the local museum volunteers to improve its system of organization and record keeping.

It is not uncommon for someone to walk into the museum, asking to see a particular item. Over the years, many community members have contributed their time to organizing the items into categories like military, household, woodworking and more.

Thankfully, there is one person who can likely remember exactly where a particular piece is.

"One dedicated museum organizer, Lois Peterson, has a mental catalog of almost every item in the museum, as well as the family names,” said Sandy Webb, one of the museum’s dedicated staff members. “We often call her to ask the location of items in question, and she can almost always tell us exactly where they are."

While having such a resource is excellent, the volunteers recognize the need to be able to identify a piece on site and more quickly when dealing with visitors who come into the museum. For these reasons, the local museum staff requested the assistance of the Minnesota Historical Society to create an up-to-date database on its inventory.

"We invited David Grabitske to the museum when he was in Lanesboro for the Minnesota Historical Society conference in 2013,” Webb said. “We discussed arranging displays to allow for more visual space and considering storing and rotating items for display. He suggested we begin with an inventory."

The $10,000 grant will go toward creating a system for cataloguing and organizing artifacts for the Lanesboro Museum.

"We need to inventory our collection and develop a searchable data base, including updated accession numbers and location information in conformance with professional museum standards," she continued.

This project has been financed in part with funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

The museum board members understood the need for an inventory in order to preserve Lanesboro’s history as its story unfolds. Utilizing an inventory gives a museum a more professional status as an institution rather than just a well-organized amateur's collection.

The Lanesboro's museum hopes to achieve these goals as well as preserve the town's history for future generations.

"The inventory is the launching point for everything else,” Webb said. “An inventory will transform this already vibrant collection of cherished community and family treasures to an effective resource for historical research and community participation."

With the inventory database, museum staff will be able to research artifacts, know all the items related for an exhibit, "identify items that meet criteria for deaccessioning" and have a better idea on how to work with the museum's resources.

Since the presentation of an item can speak volumes, being able to know how to operate and arrange the pieces in the museum is critical. However, before they are arranged, they must be located.

"One visitor's comment echoes the perceptions of many. 'Everything is so personal. It makes your community come alive.' The Lanesboro Museum is not merely a collection of artifacts; it’s part of our community’s voice to the world," Webb said.

But in order to be a voice to the world, as Webb said, one must know oneself first.

"We need to know our collection; we need to have a manageable record of the artifacts and their locations in order to maintain continuity," she added.

Currently, the staff mainly relies on their memory of where an item is, and sometimes it is an extremely arduous task. And, in Lanesboro, many people and businesses rely on the information held at the museum to answer questions for historic restoration, information for grants and much more.

For a town of 750 people, being able to fill a three-floor building with items is a testament to how the history is so important to the community and residents. Close to 95 percent of the artifacts are able to be seen now and less than that are in an outdated database from 2000. As the town keeps moving forward in the world, the museum can by no means be left in its dust.

"The museum needs to keep pace with Lanesboro’s reputation as one of 'America’s Best Small Towns,' featured in the April 2014Smithsonian. Access to a searchable database with documented locations of artifacts would foster Lanesboro Historical Preservation Association's participation in and service to this historic community," Webb noted.

Being the recipient of a grant, allowing the dreams for the inventory to come true, is tremendously exciting for those involved in the museum. After a long arduous process of application, they will soon be able to begin work on the new database.

"Over a three-month period, a professional collections consultant will enter information about each of the 1,500 plus artifacts on one floor of the museum into PastPerfect, a searchable professional data base," Webb said.

A lot of work will be put into documenting the inventory including handling and photographing each artifact, verifying the existing paper documentation, revising accession numbers as needed, assigning location IDs and recording detailed descriptions, including historical narratives as available.

"The database will provide us with a catalog from which we can work to organize captivating exhibits about particular historic or cultural topics, assist researchers and visitors, assist Lanesboro residents," Webb related.

"It's very exciting to get this grant. We really worked hard on it and it's an affirmation and starting point of the possible things we can do with it," she emphasized.

Creating the inventory for the 1,500 items is only the beginning of a three-phase plan to be implemented over the span of three years. The second phase will be for inputting 3,000 items on the upper floor into the inventory. The final phase will be for the 900 artifacts in the basement.

As the work progresses, the vast collection belonging to the Lanesboro Historical Museum will continue to become even more well-known to the staff, enabling volunteers to give aid to anyone in a more timely fashion.

With the assistance of Paige Brevick, the Lanesboro Historical Museum intern already experienced in artifact conservation and collections management, the museum will be ushered into a new era of preserving local history.

“The Lanesboro Historical Preservation Association is very grateful for this opportunity. It is such an enormous task that is possible only with the help of Minnesota Historical Society," Webb concluded.

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