The Morrison County Historical Society is pleased to announce that it has received a Legacy grant through the Minnesota Historical & Cultural Grant program administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.
The $11,090 grant will be used to provide the public with digital access to a wide variety of Morrison County history resources at The Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum.
A digital microfilm reader will be purchased that will allow researchers to view and print county newspapers available on microfilm at the museum. There are microfilmed newspapers from at least eight Morrison County communities within the Historical Society’s collection. In addition, MCHS has county census records from 1865 through 1930 on microfilm that can be accessed using the new digital reader.
The digital microfilm reader has a number of advanced features in comparison to traditional microfilm readers that will provide users with an enhanced experience, including optimum readability, cropping of documents, and printing and saving functions.
MCHS’s Digital Access Project will also include the purchase of a computer for the public to use at the Weyerhaeuser Museum to access the many Morrison County history resources online. The Morrison County Historical Society’s website, which has three sections, contains over 480 blog posts, over 210 pages, over 55 downloadable files, and over 450 images. In addition, MCHS has a collection of digitized items at the Minnesota Digital Library’s website Minnesota Reflections. There are many other online resources that contain information relevant to Morrison County’s history that researchers will be able to access through this public computer.
The Digital Access to Morrison County History Resources project will take place over the next six or seven months. We’ll keep you posted as it moves along.
Thank you to the taxpayers of Minnesota, the Historic Resources Advisory Committee, and the Minnesota Historical Society for this opportunity to increase the availability of Morrison County history .