Anoka County Historical Society

Achs staff gathered stories and artifacts of Anoka County in 2022 using professional museum standards. We held programs at local schools and the wargo nature center, gave conference sessions and raced jell-o derby cars in blaine. We received a grant from the Minnesota legacy funds to digitize the olson family collection, highlighting the matriarchal heritage of the ham lake family. We designed and built an exhibit to tell the centennial story of federal cartridge of Anoka, which included writing and conducting associated events and programs. Within our fundraising efforts, we developed an adopt an artifact program and held a record-setting year for the ghosts of Anoka walking tour by serving 1,700 people. We added more website content, which drove our visitation up from 25k to 37k, continued a second year of history 21: the podcast that reached over 2,000 plays, and attended many community festivals. The achs social media facebook page has nearly 6,000 followers and reaches an average of 20k views with each post. Achs staff continued to preserve the stories of Anoka County by using the cloud-based archiving system, collective access. Staff continues to make significant advances in efficient storage space by redesigning the storage spaces, shifting artifacts to more appropriately sized boxes, and deaccessioning items to other Historical societies that are more suited to tell their story. More and more of our collection is being turned public on the mncollections site, available through anokacountyhistory.org. This allows people worldwide to access our collection and resources without entering the building during office hours. More and more, preservation also means combing social media for pictures people post and requesting copies of those resources for our collection. The significance of achs preserving 75,000 items from federal cartridge-- the main employer in Anoka for 100 yearscant be understated. The achs disseminated history to the community through several educational efforts, including displays off-site. Several libraries and the city of centerville agreed to house pop-up displays in their cases. Centerville offered to cover the costs of printing and mounting these items continuously, changing the exhibit periodically for their residents. We continue to partner with the schools to provide supplemental presentations, most notably the civil war program. The volunteer and intern programs made a resurgence from the downturn it felt during covid-19, as did our presence at council and civic club meetings, partnerships with other nonprofits in Anoka County, and other outreach opportunities. Achs proudly accepted a Minnesota history award from malhm for our podcast. One selection committee member said, this is a great example of a Historical Society taking risks and using the technologies available to them to accomplish their core mission of educating and interpreting history. We also accepted a friend of the league award from the league of women voters, Anoka, blaine, and coon rapids for our partnership celebrating their 100th anniversary when achs curated the leagues research into an exhibition and booklet.