We've been most fortunate to receive three Minnesota Legacy grants this year. A Minnesota Bookshelf Grant, funds to help pay for a Historic Structures Grant of the Thorstien Veblen Farmstead, and a Collections Care grant. I"ll share more information about the first two list at a later time. For now, however, I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the Collections Care grant work.
This grant, titled Collection Care: Phase 1, is focused on inventorying, photographing, repacking, and storing our quilt and women's clothing collection. We will then integrate the photographs and location information into our PastPerfect database. This is phase one of a larger collections care project to transfer all collections management data to PastPerfect, photograph and inventory the entire collection, and improve over all collections care at the Rice County Historical Society. The dollars are helping to pay for the boxes, padded hangers, tissue, and a new clothes rack but most importantly, they are helping pay for a Summer Intern, Alicia Reuter, to work on the project.
Here are some images of the work:
Here you can see the work room where Alicia is bringing the objects from the collections storage space, photographing them, and then rehousing them.
Every artifacts is photographed individually...
...and together (if its an ensemble)...
...then it is carefully packed away...
...labeled with the entire contents and a black and white photo for each item in the box....
...and then the boxes are stored in the attic.
