Minnesota Quilters Oral History Preservation and Dissemination
To digitize part of a large collection of oral histories, allowing for greater public access to this historic resource.
To digitize part of a large collection of oral histories, allowing for greater public access to this historic resource.
$5,846,000 in fiscal year 2020 and $7,004,000 in fiscal year 2021 are for statewide historic and cultural grants to local, county, regional, or other historical or cultural organizations or for activities to preserve significant historic and cultural resources. Money must be distributed through a competitive grant process. The Minnesota Historical Society must administer the money using established grant mechanisms, with assistance from the advisory committee created under Laws 2009, chapter 172, article 4, section 2, subdivision 4, paragraph (b), item (ii).
Available upon request. Contact, grants@mnhs.org
All short- and intermediate-term targets have been achieved, and we are actively engaged in meeting the long-term goals. We are uploading sound files and transcripts to the Quilt Index, an international database of information about quilts and quilters, to disseminate the results of this project widely. While we planned only to use the Quilt Index for dissemination of this project's products, they have been very interested in hosting our digital materials, and have recently sent us a memorandum of understanding in which they undertake to also archive our submitted materials in perpetuity (This email has been added to the documents section.) It will shortly be signed by the appropriate officers of Minnesota Quilters.
Not surprisingly, as we analyze the contents of the recordings, we identify additional audiences that we should contact to inform about the project. We have finished contacting all county historical societies where interviewees were living, and are actively seeking additional locales and organizations that may have an interest in this archive. A sample contact letter sent to a historical society is appended. We have also begun sharing brief illustrated biographies of the interviewees on the MQP Facebook site (see appended snapshot), and in upcoming issues of the Minnesota Quilters newsletter, both of which are freely available to the public. We also plan to contact a number of relevant news organizations, both statewide and in the communities where the interviewees lived, and will create appropriate press releases about the project.
Available upon request, grants@mnhs.org