The Museum is moving forward on caring for its vast collection with several initiatives.

First, the Museum received a $3651 grant from the Minnesota Historical Society to carry out a project to inventory its 10,000-piece patch collection.  From camp patches, to shoulder patches, to OA pocket flaps, to merit badges, we’ve got them all!  The patches will be inventoried, numbered, and placed in safe storage.  At the end of the project, all of the patches in the collection will be accounted for, there will be an electronic record for each, and we will be able to put our hands on each and every one.  As the largest single group of artifacts within our collection, and among the most important and most valuable, this is an enormous step in the right direction.  We are currently seeking volunteers to work on this project with us.  We need at least six people, to work in pairs, on the inventory.  Knowledge of Scouting would be helpful.  This project has been financed in part with funds provided by the State of Minnesota through the Minnesota Historical Society’s Grants-in-Aid Program.

To help us safely store the collection in the new museum building, TKDA donated 8 sets of flat files to us.  Designed to hold blueprints and oversized drawings, these slim file drawers are ideal for large patches, flat textiles, posters, and other oversized material.  Because the drawers are so thin, they help us efficiently store artifacts, and will allow us to show these artifacts without handling them at all.  Thanks to TKDA and its employee John Purves for this great and useful donation.

During the last week in November, Sean Brown and Mark Carey of C2 Construction Services, built a wall in our main exhibition area.  This wall encloses a portion of the main open area in the building so that we can have some secure collections storage here in North St. Paul.  The wall was completed in short order, and painted on December 10 by Scouts from Troop 817.  Sean and Mark are both involved with Boy Scouting.  [see photo]

Bonnie Wilson has been volunteering to sort through the Museum’s photograph collection and try to establish some order.  Although the photograph collection is quite wonderful, it has been underutilized.  Once Bonnie’s work is done, Bob Albright has volunteered to assist in identifying the events pictured in the photographs, and will eventually help catalog the collection.  Bonnie retired earlier in 2005 from the Minnesota Historical Society where she was curator of photographs.  Her expertise on both historic photographs and picture postcards has made her somewhat of a draw here at the Museum, as members and neighbors seek her opinions.

In addition, we will begin soon entering collections data off copies of donor acknowledgement documents.  From the Museum’s founding in 1976, the people in charge did a good job of acknowledging gifts to the Museum.  Once these records are entered into the database, we will have a very good idea of what we are supposed to have in the collection.  Then we can begin the arduous task of matching the collection up with this preliminary inventory.