by Carla Urban
Quick Summary
One of the great outcomes of the MDL/DPLA Public Library Partnerships Project (PLPP) grant (concluded late last year) was that it made possible some projects that would not have occurred without the ex
One of the great outcomes of the MDL/DPLA Public Library Partnerships Project (PLPP) grant (concluded late last year) was that it made possible some projects that would not have occurred without the extra support the grant provided, particularly related to the creation of metadata. Another was the collaborations that arose between public libraries and organizations in their communities. One project that demonstrates both those outcomes is the collection of building permits from the City of Stillwater, which came into the PLPP through the auspices of Stillwater Public Library.
Building permits might seem mundane, but the collection spans 58 years, and the permits include the names of owners, builders and architects for the lots or structures, as well as details about building materials, planned improvements, building use and more. As a set, they are fascinating.
Abbi Wittman, Stillwater City Planner, described the project and its import like this:
“Stillwater issued nearly 3,000 building permits between 1886 and 1944, a time span that has been identified as having greatly influenced the community’s character and development. As preservation has been at the forefront of community planning endeavors, access to historic property records is paramount to city staff as well as individual property owners who take pride in owning their old home and are eager to learn its history. While these permits have been available on microfiche in the public library, the City saw digitizing and making these historical building permits accessible online as an opportunity to further support public education endeavors of individual sites and overall neighborhood development.”
Each of those 3,000 permits required its own metadata record. Neither the City of Stillwater nor Stillwater Public Library would have had the capacity to complete all that metadata. Fortunately, the PLPP grant funds enabled us to hire Minitex Contract Cataloging staff, who spent a whopping 150 hours on the project. We know from feedback that metadata creation is, for some potential Reflections contributors, the biggest barrier to participation in MDL, so we were pleased to have the opportunity to experiment with this model.
Take some time to look through the Stillwater Building Permits in Minnesota Reflections (and admire the metadata). On a recent visit to this historic river town after working on the project, I saw the streets and buildings in a whole new light!
