We are pleased to announce that we already have a date, location and keynote speaker for the 2019 MDL Annual Meeting! Mark your calendars for Tuesday, June 4th. We will be hosting an exceptional conference at a new location, the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center on the historic Earle Brown farm site.
The Minnesota Digital Library is pleased to announce an additional contribution to the Kanabec County Historical Society's colleciton in Minnesota Reflections. This new contribution increases the Kanabec County Historical Society's collection by more than 30%. Included in their recent project are images of agriculture, Kanabec County's contribution to the World War I war effort, and county and city government.
The Minnesota Digital Library is excited to announce the addition of a series of 6 architectural drawings from the Museum of Lake Minnetonka. The Museum is a new contributing partner to Minnesota Reflections. These drawings document the design and development of express boats on Lake Minnetonka. The drawings were completed by two boat designers: F.T. Harding and J.H. Smith.
We are now accepting applications for Phase 15 of the Minnesota Reflections project! As in past phases, we are looking for materials in, of, or about Minnesota and Minnesotans and we accept many types of formats, such as images, text, audio, and video. New this year is the opportunity to submit materials to be used in a Primary Source Set, our topic-focused initiative for students, teachers, and general researchers.
This past May, the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) held its first two regional meetings, one in the southern half of the state (St. Peter), and one in the northern half (Duluth). Both meetings were well-attended, and participants engaged in a full day of presentations, planning, and interactive discussion time, with lots of variety in structure and format.
On Friday, June 1st, Carleton College hosted their third annual Day of Digital Humanities at the Weitz Center for Creativity in Northfield. Carleton's Day of DH is a regional conference meant to highlight the work of those engaged in digital scholarship in the upper midwest. MDL Outreach Coordinator Molly Huber was one of the morning's lightning round presenters, speaking about MDL's new initiatives including the addition of geospatial metadata to Minnesota Reflections, the creation of primary source sets, and the implementation of standardized rights statements.
During the first week of June, I headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico to teach at the 2018 Summer Educational Institute (SEI). SEI is an annual, residential workshop co-sponsored by the Visual Resources Association Foundation and the Art Libraries Society of North America. SEI provides new and emerging information professionals with a substantive educational and professional development opportunity focused on digital collections, project management, digital preservation, intellectual property, digital humanities, and metadata for digital collections.
The Minitex Scan for Keeps equipment lending program will soon have a new kit for loan! Due to several requests, we are adding a scanner capable of capturing large format documents and images, up to 11" x 17". Like our other scanning kits, this kit will include various accessories and a laptop.
I recently attended and presented at two Minnesota Library Association's division conferences: the Public Libraries Division (PLD) Day on April 13 and the Academic and Research Libraries Division (ARLD) Day on April 27. At each of these conferences I presented on the work I have been doing with the Minnesota Reflections Primary Source Sets. I included an overview of the project, current titles, and introduced ways people can get involved in the project.
I am pleased to share the important work MDL recently completed in conjunction with a contractor at the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Lindsey Geyer's recent project addressed the name change from Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska, and now the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's records reflect that change. Here is Lindsey's account of this project.
Historical content from Minnesota's cultural heritage organizations, all in one place