|
September/October 2025
Check out what’s new and noteworthy in Special Collections.
 |
Once upon a time, nearly all the city’s high schools produced actual newspapers (and some schools still do!)—large-format publications with the traditional seven columns, usually published weekly, covering a wide range of topics: current student activities, profiles of students and teachers, school politics, sports, visiting speakers, alumni news, and, of course, humor.
The papers’ audiences were as likely to be alumni as current students. Each paper boasted a large student staff that worked to produce a professional-looking paper and provide students with actual journalistic experience. Hennepin County Library has gathered these papers for decades, partially to support the collections in the “Young People’s Room” at the old Main Library.
Today, these papers provide detailed information on the local educational experience and valuable family history concerning local residents. With funding from the Friends of Hennepin County Library, Special Collections has been digitizing thousands of issues of these papers, many of which are now available in the HCL Digital Collections.
These include the papers from schools still in operation, such as Edison, as well as those of the past, such as Central and Marshall. The digitized papers range from the 1910s to the 1980s. Many of the earlier issues of these papers are now literally falling apart, and digitization is a last-ditch effort to preserve their content. In addition to the school papers, we have also been digitizing the bulletins and newsletters from Minneapolis Public Schools and a local PTA publication.
Over 3,000 issues of newspapers, bulletins, and magazines have been loaded to date. Many more are on the way, including some suburban school publications. The collection is keyword searchable and can be browsed by individual school or publication.
 We are happy to report that Abbey Hemken, our former Digitization and Archival Processing assistant, had a baby this past spring! But we are sad to say that she has decided not to return to the library, electing to stay home with her new son, Lewis. Both mother and baby are doing well. We already miss her a lot but wish her the best in her new role.
As a parting “gift,” her husband, Daniel, an engineer, created a set of Microsoft Excel macros for us, which eliminates a lot of extra work in creating content for our Digital Collections. A dull-sounding, “techy” detail, perhaps, but one which has already saved us days of work, particularly with respect to the school newspaper project.
Thank you, Daniel and Abbey!
This summer, we were delighted to host St. Catherine University MLIS student Natalie Wright as an intern with the school newspaper project. Natalie volunteered 120 hours scanning and creating metadata for 14 of these titles, which included hundreds of issues. Outside of volunteering for the library, Natalie takes pleasure in reading, going on walks, and attending concerts. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and two cats. We wish Natalie well as she begins her second-to-last semester at St. Kate’s this fall!
Here’s more from Natalie:
Q: Have you found anything weird, unusual, or especially interesting in the school publications?
A: In several issues of The Southerner (the student newspaper for South High School) from the 1920s, they included pictures of the two students who were voted "best looking" on the front page of the paper. This is such a weird superlative to give to high school students, but is kind of hilarious to look back on.
Q: Favorite place or building in Minneapolis or Hennepin County?
A: My favorite places in Minneapolis are the Riverview Theater and the Cedar Cultural Center. Both are neighborhood gems that have such homey and welcoming atmospheres.
Q: Coolest library or archive you’ve ever visited?
A: I've visited so many cool libraries and archives, but one of my favorites is the Minnesota Braille and Talking Book Library in Northeast Minneapolis. They provide audiobooks, braille, and large print books to all vision-impaired Minnesotans free of charge.
 These collections have been recently organized and rehoused, with finding aids now online:
-
Ray Harris Papers – Ray Harris, a Minneapolis property developer and lifelong resident, recently passed away. New additions to his papers include photos of uptown and downtown in the 1970s and 1980s.
-
Ray Harris Collection of Matchcovers – Dozens of matchbook covers from Hennepin County establishments, including restaurants, hotels, country clubs, athletic clubs, fraternal societies, stores, companies, hospitals, railroads, and other entities. Most covers are undated. This collection was compiled by local real estate developer Ray Harris and acquired by the library in July.
The following new donations were recently received in Special Collections. These collections are unprocessed, but available for research:
-
All About Kids! Video Tapes – Umatic, S-VHS, and Betacam SP master tapes of All About Kids! episodes 221-283. These tapes complete the All About Kids! television series, the rest of which is already available in our Digital Collections. While the rest of the series was produced by Hennepin County Library, these final episodes were produced by Metronet and were taped on location throughout the Twin Cities. They will eventually be added to our Digital Collections.
-
Southeast Como Improvement Association Records (Accrual) – Subject files, administrative files, and other records of the Southeast Como Improvement Association. SECIA merged into East Bank Neighborhoods Partnership in 2024.
-
Voices from the Old South Side Oral Histories – Nine oral history recordings with past residents of the Black community on the south side of Minneapolis. The oral histories, which include audio recordings and transcripts, were completed by the Minnesota Star Tribune in conjunction with the "Ghost of a Chance" podcast by reporter Eric Roper.
Websites of over 15 Minneapolis business associations have been added to our Minneapolis Neighborhoods web archive. Like all our web archives, we will periodically save interactive copies of these websites as they appeared at a particular date and time. As less and less material is printed, these archived websites will be an essential resource for future researchers researching the people, activities, and projects of our communities in the 2020s.
  
We find great amusement in the clothes and hairstyles found in the pages of the yearbooks. It’s often easy to date photos from the past to a decade based on fashion trends, but it can get complicated when trends cross decades or get recycled. Reminisce with fads and fashions through the years. Can you guess which years are pictured above?
The yearbook collection in Special Collections includes nearly 4,000 unique yearbooks for over 270 Hennepin County schools, including elementary schools, middle and junior high schools, senior high schools, private academies, nursing schools, colleges, and universities. Over 2,200 of these yearbooks are digitized and available in the library’s Digital Collections.
or...
James K. Hosmer Special Collections
Minneapolis Central Library
300 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Hours: Monday - Thursday, 9am - 4:30pm.
Appointments are not necessary, but you do need to call Special Collections or check-in at the 4th floor reference desk upon arrival for department access. You can speed up your visit by requesting materials be pulled in advance. Photocopier and scanners are available. Please bring a flash drive to store your scanned images.
Photo: Inside the climate-controlled Special Collections vault, where rare books, negatives, and AV materials are stored.
Email specialcoll@hclib.org or visit hclib.org/specialcollections for more information.
|
|
