CollectiveAccess Minnesota Training & Support Development
To develop application, training, and support programs for new CollectiveAccess museum users in Minnesota.
Partners: Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums, Eden Prairie Historical Society, Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Historical Society, Golden Valley Historical Society, Goodhue County Historical Society, Hopkins Historical Society, Hormel Historic Home, Kandiyohi County Historical Society, Shoreview Historical Society, Westonka Historical Society, White Bear Lake Area Historical Society, Pope County Historical Society
This partnership had its start in April 2014 when a task force of Minnesota-based collection managers and other museum personnel from 15 local historical societies began working together on the future of their collections management systems. Most Minnesota history museums' software runs on an obsolete database, which puts collection data at risk.
The task force determined CollectiveAccess, a free, open-source, web-based collections management system currently in use by a wide range of museums, would be the best solution. In 2017, the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums (MALHM) received a Heritage Partnership Program grant to launch a pilot program using CollectiveAccess. The five pilot sites worked with the Minnesota local history museum community to develop a customized Minnesota version of CollectiveAccess. The pilot sites have converted their collection data to CollectiveAccess and have used it exclusively and successfully for about a year.
For this 2019 grant, MALHM and ten partnership sites will develop a process to ensure the success of new users to CollectiveAccess Minnesota. The goals for this project include 1) Establishing an application system to add new users to CollectiveAccess Minnesota to ensure organizations have the appropriate personnel and financial capacity to join the software community, 2) Developing a training program and appropriate manuals and tutorials to provide a base level of proficiency to users, and 3) Developing an ongoing support program to meet the needs of users and answer questions promptly.
For more information about Advisory Group Members and conflicts of interest disclosures, please contact:
Carolyn Veeser-Egbide
Grants Manager
Minnesota Historical Society
651-259-3469
carolyn.veeser-egbide@mnhs.org
$2,000,000 each year is for partnerships involving multiple organizations, which may include the Minnesota Historical Society, to preserve and enhance access to Minnesota's history and cultural heritage in all regions of the state.
Available upon request. Contact:grants@mnhs.org
We met or exceeded all of the measurable impacts listed in our application. Our short term goal was to add 10 organizations to CollectiveAccess MN while creating an application process, training program, and addressing support needs going forward. We succeeded in this goal.
Our intermediate goal was to have more of MN's cultural heritage available on-line. The 10 new organizations have currently shared over 55,000 records to MNCollections.org. As of October 2020, there are nearly 172,000 object records being shared on MNCollections, making a wealth of information about Minnesota's cultural heritage available to the world-wide public.
Our long-term goal was to double the number of users over the next three years. We have nearly doubled our users in less than a year. We had 7 users before this grant began. We added 10 with the grant. We currently have 27 active users with 5 more ready to join in January. The lessons we have learned through this grant have allowed us to streamline our application and training process.
Available upon request, grants@mnhs.org