Submitted photo
An 1907 outing on Lake Washington, northeast of Mankato, is one of the pictures in a new collection of historic photos on a Web site dedicated to old photos, and eventually documents, from across the state.
MANKATO — History meets high-tech with a new online digital photo library of old photos, including hundreds from Blue Earth and Nicollet counties.
Minnesota Reflections is a statewide project aimed at putting historical photos on one site. The Web site is http://reflections.mndigital.org.
The collection so far includes more than 6,000 images taken prior to 1909.
"The biggest advantage is making information available to more people," said Daardi Sizemore, archives and special collections librarian at Minnesota State University, and one of the members of the group overseeing the project.
"Many historical societies and archives have fascinating collections that people don't know about or don't know to ask for. This is just a hint of what's out there."
There are several search options on the Web page, letting people search by a city name, a region, or a topic such as "barn" or "train" or "Mankato flood." There are some editing tools, allowing users to crop or flip a photo before printing or e-mailing it.
Each photo has information about the picture and a link to the historical society or collection the photo came from. "If people want a better copy of a photo, they can contact the collection it came from directly to work with them on it," Sizemore said.
The next phase of the project is to get more groups from around the state to include photos and to begin adding historical documents to the site.
The project is being funded by a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Department of Education.
More than 55 libraries, museums and special archives joined to create the digital collection, including the Nicollet and Blue Earth counties historical societies.
Jessica Potter, executive director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society, said they were one of the largest contributors, sending nearly 400 photos, which was the maximum allowed by any one group.
"We had them scan all the images, so we also got all those images in digital form on CDs. That's not something we are able to do ourselves, so it's nice for us."
Sizemore said the first phase concentrated on photos taken prior to 1909, in part because copyright laws didn't come into effect until after that time. She said it takes more time to ensure no copyrights are violated by posting the photos shot after 1909.
"Most of the time the group that has the collection has the rights to the photos, but if the photo was taken by a professional photographer, it can get trickier because they often hold the copyright," Sizemore said.
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