Improving Collections throughout Stearns County

FAIN: PG-51939-13

Stearns History Museum (St. Cloud, MN 56301-3752)
Sarah Warmka (Project Director: May 2012 to December 2014)

Attendance at preservation training workshops at the Campbell Center for Historical Preservation by three historical society staff, who would then offer training to small affiliate museums, located throughout Stearns County, Minnesota. The collections of the Stearns County Museum and Research Center, consisting of 20,000 artifacts and a repository of 500,000 photographs and 1,250 linear feet of archival materials, document the immigrant, agricultural, and industrial history of rural central Minnesota through ethnographic objects, artifacts, business records, and photographs. The collections of the affiliate museums reflect their individual locations; together the collections serve a varied audience and are used for educational programming, exhibits, and local history and genealogical research. The training sessions would help to improve collections care for these small historical societies whose staff lack formal preservation education.

The NEH Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions will support three employees of the Stearns County Historical Society, d.b.a. Stearns History Museum and Research Center (SHMRC) to attend three different classes at the Campbell Center for Historical Preservation. Each attendee will attend a workshop appropriate to her job. The selected workshops are Collections Policies for Small Museums, Care of Paper Artifacts, and Care of Historic Scrapbooks. After returning to Stearns County, the attendees will share their new knowledge and information with at least three of the six affiliated Stearns County museums though on-site visits. Stearns County Historical Society has a formal relationship with these very small local museums in Kimball, Melrose, Paynesville, Saint Joseph, and Sauk Centre. Both the Sauk Centre Area Historical Society and the Sinclair Lewis Foundation and Boyhood Home are located in Sauk Centre.