Regional Digitization
Expand the diversity of southeastern Minnesota digital resources through collaborations with local libraries, community organizations, Minitex, the Minnesota Digital Library and the Minnesota Historical Society. Facilitate the creation of new local history displays, exhibits, or conversations. SELCO will work with libraries, historical societies, and other local organizations to document these potential new uses of the digitized newspapers. SELCO will work with libraries, historical societies, and other local organizations to seek additional Legacy funds to create educational programs or curriculum using the digitized newspapers. Create a treasury of long-sought or unexpected information from digitizing newspapers from Southeastern Minnesota. To gauge the value of the digitized collection, SELCO will survey members of the community with newspapers included in the digitized collection. In addition, anecdotes and stories will be collected from users of the digitized collection.
In FY2013, the Minnesota Historical Society finalized work on its its new newspaper access portal, the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub (Hub). As a central repository and resource for digitized Minnesota newspapers, the Hub will make historic newspapers freely accessible over the Internet and provide greatly improved access through keyword searching of the page content. During the period of April through early June 2013, the database and access tool underwent final testing, and the ingestion of digitized material into the database occurred almost non-stop. The SELCO newspapers are a key component and the Society has uploaded all of the digitized SELCO newspapers to the Hub. Following a final system upgrade and performance assessment, the launch date for the Hub is anticipated in Fall 2013. Digitized newspapers: Wabasha County (3,184 pages) -- The Wabasha Herald (1872-1875), Wabasha Weekly Herald (1866-1875), The Wabasha Herald (1866), The Wabashaw County Herald (1862-1866), Wabashaw Semi-Weekly County Herald (1861-1862), The Wabashaw County Herald (1857-1861), The Wabashaw Weekly County Herald (1857), The Waumadee Herald (1857); Steele County (35,461 pages) -- The Daily People's Press (1916-1922), The People's Press (1874-1921).
SELCO, Minnesota Historical Society