Mr. Ryan

The Minnesota Historical Society has created a database of our
Photograph Collection and placed the records and digital images online.
The search engine allows users to search for photographs in much the
same way they would search for a book in an online library catalogue.
By June of this year the Society plans to have over 90,000 of its
250,000 photographic records available online, with approximately 23,000
of them linked to their corresponding digital image.

The Photograph database can be reached at:
http://www.mnhs.org/library/search/vrdb/bsearch.html

Also available is our Ayer Ojibwe Collection, in which 900 objects from
the Museum Collections were scanned and a search created to allow
patrons to view the objects via the web.  By this June we plan to add
Museum Collections searches for the five following categories:  Civil
War, Fur Trade, Prairie School furniture, Gay Lesbian Bisexual
Transgendered objects and Quilts.

Images from the Ayer Ojibwe Collection can be found at:
http://www.mnhs.org/library/search/ayer.html

Also in the works is a new Visual Resources Database that would allow
patrons to search not only the Society's Photograph Collection but also
the Art and Poster Collections as well.  We are expecting this to occur
in the next 2 - 3 months.

If you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance please let me
know.

Thanks,

Jason O. Roy
Collections Access Projects Coordinator
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Blvd. West
St. Paul, MN  55102-1906
tel: 651/296-2496  fax:  651/296-9961
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> ----------
> From:         Matt Mayberry[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent:         Tuesday, January 05, 1999 5:11 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Web Databases
>
>         I am looking for museums preferably in the Mountain-Plains
> Region who have published or are contemplating publishing their
> collections databases on the World Wide Web.  I'm trying to put
> together
> a session for the Mountain-Plains Museum Association Annual Meeting in
> Santa Fe, NM, October 14-17, 1999 on the internal debate that an
> institution goes through in preparation for this project, i.e. what
> data
> do you present, how much information do you give out, how clean should
> the records be, etc.?  Deadline for session proposals is January 15th.
> Anyone interested in participating?  A prompt reply would be most
> appreciated.  Please reply to:
>         Dave Ryan
>         [log in to unmask]
>