Minnesota Historical Society Reps Visit Museum

This past Friday  (February 7,2025) Todd Mahon and Joe Hoover from the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul came to the museum to share some advice and answer some questions that can hopefully help us achieve our goals of preserving Lac qui Parle County’s history and keeping the Museum organized.  Mr. Mahon works as a Field Services Specialist while Mr. Hoover works as a Digital Technology Outreach Specialist.  Both men travel to various museums throughout the state helping them organize their inventories, plan out larger projects, and keep up to date on technology.

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ne of the things we were looking for advice on was how to document and preserve the Del Thielke collection. Several years ago, Dawson photographer Del Thielke donated his entire collection of negatives to the museum.  He started his photography business in 1950 and by the time he retired he had done almost 20,000 sitings. His whole collection fills up around twenty shelves in our storage and is made up of more than a hundred boxes and hundreds of thousands of photographs. While we have entered thousands of pictures into our own files already, the size of the Thielke collection poses its own challenge.

Mahon and Hoover suggested starting with a grant that would bring in an archivist to develop a plan on how to organize and inventory the photographs. The museum would then hire a temporary employee to work on entering the collection into our database. Mahon and Hoover also gave us some advice on how to manage a few other projects including a couple dozen boxes of pictures we received from the Western Guard. 

            We also talked about managing our collection process and they suggested that we make a few simple changes to our policy.  We are currently working on a new donation and acquisition policy.  If you are interested in donating something (artifacts, pictures, stories, or other articles) to the museum, we will now have you sign a temporary custody form, and the Acquisitions & Collections Committee will decide if the item or artifact will be added to our collection.  The decision to keep or return the donation will be based on historical merit, connection to LqP County, if we have something similar in our collection, condition and whether or not we have room for it. We are hoping that this change will make it easier for us to organize our inventory and prevent duplicates.

            Another thing we talked about was creating more storage space in the museum. Since the museum’s opening in 1971 we have acquired a substantial collection of artifacts, books, letters, appliances, and other items; and while we have multiple rooms and a basement dedicated to storage, we have had problems finding storage space for some items. Mahon and Hoover suggested hiring a consultant to come up with ideas on making better use of our existing space. One idea that came out of the brainstorming session was moving some duplicate items into our exhibit areas to be used as an interactable item for visitors to use and examine while visiting the museum. One example is to move one of our many typewriters into the Bly Study so young visitors can see what it was like to use a machine they probably haven’t seen before.

            Mr. Hoover also took some time to help us with some of the technological aspects of the museum. He gave us some good recommendations on how to keep our computers and scanners working well, showed us a service the state historical society provides to help connect museums with experts, and helped with some other technological issues.

            Overall, the visit was very beneficial and gave us some great ideas and advice on how to be a more efficient and organized museum.