Friday, November 7, 10am–12pm
North Regional Library

Learn how to archive, organize, and preserve the records of your organization or group for the future. Led by the our Special Collections archivist, this class is designed for staff and volunteers from any type of community group and anyone who has an interest in preserving local history. Leave class knowing how to store and preserve documents, photos, digital files, recordings, and more, and be prepared to organize your group's history.

Books are a small part of the joy that libraries bring to communities, especially for children. Since 1889, our library system has touched the lives of countless children each year through story times, magic and puppet shows, author visits, festivals, summer reading programs, indoor play spaces, and so much more. Take a journey to the past and learn how Hennepin County Libraries have adapted to serve our youngest patrons.

This online exhibit is in partnership with the Friends of the Hennepin County Library, as part of the Treasures of Special Collections series.

Our Digital Collections have grown over the years to contain a large number of documents and publications for which we use optical character recognition (OCR) software to make their text searchable. Handwritten materials have presented a challenge for us since OCR does not work with script. Manuscript materials such as the James Smith WWII Letters were transcribed, manually, by a volunteer—a tedious process. We have also worked with voice dictation tools, having volunteers read text aloud into the computer microphone—but the results have required significant formatting and editing. Handwritten text-recognition software has been around for a while, but only in recent years has it significantly improved using AI and a wide range of script models.

Last month, we began a subscription to Transkribus, an Austria-based text-recognition tool that features custom AI training to improve accuracy. To begin, we’re working on the Lord Family WWII Correspondence, a set of over 1,000 letters between Staff Sergeant Harry Holmes Lord, Jr. of the United States Marine Corps, and his family in Minneapolis (only about 400 are handwritten). Digital images of the handwritten letters are uploaded to the Transkribus site. Each page is “read,” and a transcript is generated:

The example above shows the unedited transcript generated by the Transkribus “bot”. As you can see, there are very few errors.

Staff give a quick review of the transcript for any errors, then load the text to the metadata for that letter in our Digital Collections. Read the complete letter from Marine Sergeant Harry Lord, Jr. to his younger brother Charles, from May 26, 1943. Click “Transcript” below the image to view the text from Transkribus.

Transcriptions can allow for easier reading of challenging handwriting, but more importantly, they allow for greater discoverability of the information in the text through keyword searching.

Staff have just begun using this new product and only about 10 letters have been transcribed so far. Many more handwritten pages are on the way from this collection and others!

The Special Collections department houses more than just local history. We have 11 rare book collections, including the Kittleson WWII Collection, notable for its posters, regimental and unit histories, and published material contemporaneous with the war. We have been working on a year-long review of this collection.

As part of this process, many manuals and handbooks that were previously part of a vertical file collection have been cataloged and placed in archival enclosures. They are now discoverable in the hclib.org online catalog.

Check out some highlights from the collection:

How to Serve Bananas in the Service, Home Economics Department, Fruit Dispatch Company, c1940-1945.

Features nutrition facts about bananas and a bunch of banana recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Bananas are easily digested, a quick energy source, and contain vitamins which prevent night blindness (A) and scurvy (C) and help keep nerves steady (B1). Try a banana cabbage salad with ripe bananas, cabbage, green pepper, lemon, salt, mayonnaise, and mustard!

Winter Draws On, prepared by the Safety Education Division of Flight Control; Illustrated by Walt Disney, 1943.

Meet the Spandule, a close relative of the Gremlin. These little fellows come down from high altitudes in winter weather, wreaking havoc on airplanes and causing problems for pilots. Only a pilot who’s on his toes can prevent a run-in with them. Walt Disney’s Spandules look like something straight out of the film Fantasia, which was released just a few years prior.

Training Women for War Work: Methods and Suggestions for Expediting the Job, War Manpower Commission, Bureau of Training, Apprentice-Training, 1943.

Do You Want Your Wife to Work After the War? War Department, 1944.

These two manuals work well side-by-side. The first, compiled by training specialist Mary Curran, outlines the great need for womanpower and provides tips for training the “totally inexperienced.” Curran stresses the importance of hiring woman counselors to work as liaisons between the workers and management.

A year later, the War Department published a manual for men aimed at provoking discussion around the issue of whether women should continue working. It contains facts, figures, and a summary of the various arguments and ultimately asks, “what will the women want?” and “how can a man decide?”

Can War Marriages Be Made to Work? War Department, 1944.

Another from the G.I. Roundtable Series (which produced Do You Want Your Wife to Work After the War?), comes a discussion around the success of wartime marriage. Many war marriages are hasty marriages. Think before you act. Find out what makes her tick, but don’t try to change her. Meet the girl’s parents…study them! Think in terms of growth and change. And somewhat surprisingly, suggests discussing the topic with both men and women as both points of view will increase the value of the thought given to this problem.

Wartime Suggestions to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Refrigerator, Frigidaire Division, General Motors, 1943.

Part advertisement, part instructional manual, this booklet emphasizes the importance of refrigerators to the war effort. By refrigerating food at home, you can reduce food waste so our fighting men can be properly fed. It includes tips for caring for and maintaining your fridge and over 140 suggestions for utilizing leftover food in a variety of attractive dishes.