MSU Assistant history Professor Roger Rosentreter learned Monday about a grant that will help to place resources on Michigan’s history online, and he’s already supportive of the idea.
“A lot of information is in small library districts and the people outside that area don’t know about it,” said Rosentreter, who teaches a class about Michigan history and would consider informing his students about such a Web site. “If this grant provides an opportunity to deliver this kind of information, it’s wonderful.”
The university received the $486,016 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services last week. MSU will work with nine other universities, library districts and organizations to help collect and digitize manuscripts on town foundings, photographs and other documents as part of The Making of Modern Michigan.
Training librarians how to use technology and how to better distribute information to its patrons is also a goal of the award.
“There’s a lot of delicious information as to what Michigan state history is like,” said Michael Seadle, project director and head of Digital and Multimedia Center for the Main Library. “We want to build a mosaic where we understand Michigan history.”
Seadle said many state history collections go up until the early 1920s and then stop. Most data from after that time is held in smaller libraries, where many people do not have access to it, he said.
Money from the grant will also go toward obtaining copyrights, so project members can obtain as much data as possible. Seadle also said Michiganians will have a reason to be interested in the digitized resources.
“People can see what the towns they grew up in were like,” he said. “People everywhere in the state are interested in the digitization of history.”
MSU will serve as one of the eight digitization centers, where all collected data will be transformed from paper into a Web site. Seadle said the grant was issued for two years, but the project will probably continue beyond that.
Eileen Maxwell, spokeswoman for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, said MSU was a good choice to receive one of the 38 grants given to universities and research institutions across the nation.
Maxwell said one of the most important goals of the project is training librarians so they will be up-to-date on how to use new technology.
“It’s given to projects that can serve as a national model,” Maxwell said. “Hopefully, other states can replicate this.”
