The Monroe Public Library has long held a treasure trove of historical materials that are not well known to its visitors. Many of these have been locked away in glass cases in the first-floor conference room. Later this fall, the Monroe Public Library will officially launch its Special Collections department.
What is Special Collections at Monroe Public Library?
Special Collections will be a new department dedicated to acquiring, assessing and preserving archival items related to Monroe, other small populated places in the county (past and present), without a historical society, museum, or library. The department will have two areas: the physical archives and the digital collection.
How does it work?
We'll get items through donation or purchase. There may be some items we can only borrow and add to the digital archives. When patrons want to access the physical archives, they will have to contact Special Collections staff to set up an appointment at least 24 hours in advance. Once an appointment has been made, someone from the Special Collections staff will accompany the patron to the reading room and supervise their time there. Patrons will not be allowed to remove archival material from the reading room.
What and where is the reading room?
We will be using a suite of rooms at the former Charter School building for storage and for our first reading room. Eventually, we'd like to create a new reading room within the library building as part of upcoming renovations.
What will collections look like?
The library currently holds historic items that were donated to it over the years, including scrapbooks, films, postcards, yearbooks, photos, school records, church records, and books of historic interest. In addition to improving the care these items receive, the Special Collections team is working to make these items more visible. The department will eventually house materials in a variety of formats including but not limited to: pamphlets, posters, letters, ledgers, original government records, diaries and journals, handwritten and printed materials, ephemera, film, audio, and stereo views.
Collecting areas planned include but are not limited to: local notable figures, history of Monroe School District, Green County clubs and organizations, historic events that pertain to the Green County area, Monroe government and city history, local traditionally published authors and musicians, sports and Monroe Public Library's own history.
Areas not actively collected will include the cheese industry (we do have some photos and postcards), Albany, Belleville, Brodhead, Monticello and New Glarus. The department would eventually like to find its own niche with a collecting area that is different from that of other organizations. Our goal is to complement, rather than duplicate, the efforts of those organizations.
The library's Special Collections department will also be creating content, such as recording oral history interviews. Online exhibits will be developed to feature on the Special Collections website.
Why is the library doing this?
The Special Collections team is very excited to make these types of materials easily accessible online. Once a strong framework is established, we hope to facilitate cooperation and digital accessibility among other local organizations with historical records in their custody.
A big part of improving the visibility of the resources comes with digitizing them and making them viewable online. A new website will be unveiled this fall that will allow people to know what materials the department owns and make adding additional information on items a snap.
Preserving the materials in the event of disaster is also a reason for digitization. Should the collection itself be destroyed in a building disaster, the content will be preserved. This goal was important in the recent digitization of the yearbook collection. If the collection were to be destroyed, it would have been very difficult to replace it. But with our new digital copies, the loss would have less impact.
What do you do to the materials?
The project is headed by a seven-member staff team, cast in a wide variety of roles:
• Procurers: Will acquire materials for accession, or will negotiate the loan of materials for scanning and return to the owner.
• Arrangers: Will assess the acquired items in a particular donation to determine how the items should be organized.
• Describers: Will catalog and describe the materials, create finding aids, and add metadata (set of data that describes and gives information about other data) for the Special Collections website.
• Doctors: Will stabilize the materials with regard to condition, make small repairs, and determine proper storage.
• Digitizers: Will scan the materials for purposes of preservation, online display, and distribution.
• Uploaders: Will take the scans created by the digitizers and the output of the Describers and uploads to the Special Collections website.
All the incoming materials, whether on loan or given to the department, will proceed through the process that the roles above outline. The only difference with loaned materials is that they will not visit the doctors for treatment.
The library's Special Collections department will also be creating content, such as recording oral history interviews. Online exhibits will be developed to feature on the Special Collections website.
A launch event will be scheduled for the fall. For those interested in learning more before the launch event, please contact Director Suzann Holland at sholland@monroepubliclibrary.org or at 328-7016.
- Cover to Cover is provided by the Monroe Public Library and is published the fourth Wednesday of the month.
What is Special Collections at Monroe Public Library?
Special Collections will be a new department dedicated to acquiring, assessing and preserving archival items related to Monroe, other small populated places in the county (past and present), without a historical society, museum, or library. The department will have two areas: the physical archives and the digital collection.
How does it work?
We'll get items through donation or purchase. There may be some items we can only borrow and add to the digital archives. When patrons want to access the physical archives, they will have to contact Special Collections staff to set up an appointment at least 24 hours in advance. Once an appointment has been made, someone from the Special Collections staff will accompany the patron to the reading room and supervise their time there. Patrons will not be allowed to remove archival material from the reading room.
What and where is the reading room?
We will be using a suite of rooms at the former Charter School building for storage and for our first reading room. Eventually, we'd like to create a new reading room within the library building as part of upcoming renovations.
What will collections look like?
The library currently holds historic items that were donated to it over the years, including scrapbooks, films, postcards, yearbooks, photos, school records, church records, and books of historic interest. In addition to improving the care these items receive, the Special Collections team is working to make these items more visible. The department will eventually house materials in a variety of formats including but not limited to: pamphlets, posters, letters, ledgers, original government records, diaries and journals, handwritten and printed materials, ephemera, film, audio, and stereo views.
Collecting areas planned include but are not limited to: local notable figures, history of Monroe School District, Green County clubs and organizations, historic events that pertain to the Green County area, Monroe government and city history, local traditionally published authors and musicians, sports and Monroe Public Library's own history.
Areas not actively collected will include the cheese industry (we do have some photos and postcards), Albany, Belleville, Brodhead, Monticello and New Glarus. The department would eventually like to find its own niche with a collecting area that is different from that of other organizations. Our goal is to complement, rather than duplicate, the efforts of those organizations.
The library's Special Collections department will also be creating content, such as recording oral history interviews. Online exhibits will be developed to feature on the Special Collections website.
Why is the library doing this?
The Special Collections team is very excited to make these types of materials easily accessible online. Once a strong framework is established, we hope to facilitate cooperation and digital accessibility among other local organizations with historical records in their custody.
A big part of improving the visibility of the resources comes with digitizing them and making them viewable online. A new website will be unveiled this fall that will allow people to know what materials the department owns and make adding additional information on items a snap.
Preserving the materials in the event of disaster is also a reason for digitization. Should the collection itself be destroyed in a building disaster, the content will be preserved. This goal was important in the recent digitization of the yearbook collection. If the collection were to be destroyed, it would have been very difficult to replace it. But with our new digital copies, the loss would have less impact.
What do you do to the materials?
The project is headed by a seven-member staff team, cast in a wide variety of roles:
• Procurers: Will acquire materials for accession, or will negotiate the loan of materials for scanning and return to the owner.
• Arrangers: Will assess the acquired items in a particular donation to determine how the items should be organized.
• Describers: Will catalog and describe the materials, create finding aids, and add metadata (set of data that describes and gives information about other data) for the Special Collections website.
• Doctors: Will stabilize the materials with regard to condition, make small repairs, and determine proper storage.
• Digitizers: Will scan the materials for purposes of preservation, online display, and distribution.
• Uploaders: Will take the scans created by the digitizers and the output of the Describers and uploads to the Special Collections website.
All the incoming materials, whether on loan or given to the department, will proceed through the process that the roles above outline. The only difference with loaned materials is that they will not visit the doctors for treatment.
The library's Special Collections department will also be creating content, such as recording oral history interviews. Online exhibits will be developed to feature on the Special Collections website.
A launch event will be scheduled for the fall. For those interested in learning more before the launch event, please contact Director Suzann Holland at sholland@monroepubliclibrary.org or at 328-7016.
- Cover to Cover is provided by the Monroe Public Library and is published the fourth Wednesday of the month.