MONDAY MORNING MUSEUM UPDATE – March 24, 2025 – Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum

In this week’s update: FREE Digital Image Preservation Workshop, $15,000 operational fund grant, Donor Honor Wall, and more!

In our weekly update, keep up to date on what staff and volunteers at the Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum are working on to lift up the history of Lindsborg and the surrounding region. This weekly update both looks back at what happened last week and looks ahead at what’s coming.

For March 17-23, 2025:

Next Monday, March 31 at 6 p.m., we will have a FREE online Zoom workshop on “Digital Image Preservation: Scanning & Saving Your Family Photos.”
Presented in partnership by Lindsborg Old Mill and Swedish Heritage Museum and the Kansas State Historical Society, this will cover best practices for scanning and imaging standards, creating a digital workflow, and the digital image preservation techniques used by the Kansas State Historical Society. The information will be useful for both the professional and the amateur family archivist.

After a 20-minute presentation, there will be an opportunity for an in-depth Q&A session. Following Q&A, the museum’s Collections Manager will present a brief tutorial on how to navigate and search for pictures and scans in the museum’s Historic Image Database.

Registration is required through the form HERE or calling 785-227-3595 and is limited to 100 people.
We were pleased to be named last week for a $15,000 unrestricted operational funds grant from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation! This is a fantastic help to helping the museum meet our 2025 budgetary needs. If you are interested in making a major gift to help the museum continue its mission of lifting up local history and Swedish-American culture, please contact us at 785-227-3595 or at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com!
SAVE THE DATE! The next online Swedish Genealogy Workshop will be on Saturday, June 7! Details and registration will be coming soon!
We have an opportunity to help the museum while picking up a great computer tablet for yourself! THREE of these have already been sold; get one of the TWO remaining before they sell out!
We recently used grant funds to purchase five Lenovo P11 (2nd gen) tablets to implement our first augmented reality tour of the 1898 Smoky Valley Roller Mills, only to discover that Lenovo sells slightly different builds of the tablet under the exact same model name. Unfortunately, that slight difference – most likely in the GPS location services – means it won’t work with the Wintor augmented reality app we’re using for the tour, and Amazon is not accepting a return of the tablets.
This means a great opportunity for you! You can purchase one of these never-used tablets (specifications here) with charging cord and AC adapter, plus a heavy duty protective case (with hand strap, shoulder strap, and kickstand) for $265, which just represents the cost we paid for each tablet and case. This will help us to recover the grant funds and purchase different tablets that will work with the tour app.
Contact us at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com to make arrangements for your purchase!
We have available now sponsorship opportunities for Millfest 2025 on May 3! Details for doing YOUR part and details on how to sponsor are on the flyer below! Just get in touch at oldmillmuseum@gmail.com for more information. ADDITIONAL MILLFEST NEWS: We will be partnering with the International Harvester Collection Club for the first-ever Millfest Tractor Show!
Adam updated the online Donor Honor Wall page!
Lenora has set up to go to regular coffee conversations at Sunflower Terrace and the Senior Center as an oral history preservation project. Please CONTACT US if you have ideas of topics you’d like to have covered.
Adam and Aubrey worked on editing the proof designs for new display panels for the back gallery.
Aubrey worked on a grant through the Mellon Foundation and Adam started editing the application.
Tyler and Lenora continued working on Svensk Hyllningsfest project, continuing to upload scanned images to Flickr. Following a feature story on the project in the Lindsborg News-Record, views to the project images have continued to increase. The project now includes more than 7,800 images and has received more than 322,000 views. Lenora submitted final grant reports related to funding for the multimedia digitization project and the Historic Image Database. Lenora is working on an application for the next round of a grant for continued funding to the Historic Image Database.
Adam mailed out the 2024 Annual Report to designated recipients as well as sending it by email. It will be posted to the website for the public to view this week.
Adam worked with Spelbok games and comics to schedule this year’s Magic at the Mill! Mark your calendars for card-game fun on Saturday, September 20!
Aubrey met with another possible contractor about landscaping updates to the front entrance of the museum.
Aubrey continued working on Millfest preparation.
Adam placed an order for new Millfest/Heritage Christmas tourist rack cards as well as a reorder of generic museum info rack cards.
Adam worked on the required forms to receive the second half of the Kansas Arts Commission 2024-2025 General Operating Support grant.
Adam started working on setting up event registration on a new platform.
Lenora completed a research request for an individual in upstate New York.
Lenora has continued working on an indexing project under contract with ArkivDigital (10 hours)
If you haven’t yet “Liked” us on Facebook, can you take a moment to do so? We’d like to break 3,000 followers before springtime! (Currently our followers are at 2,704.) This kind of small action really does make a difference for our public visibility!
Need a great gift for the genealogist or history enthusiast in your life? NEW in the museum gift shop, you can now purchase a gift certificate good for a free registration to one of the museum’s Online Swedish Genealogy Workshops anytime in 2025 ($50) or a 2025 Pursuing YOUR Past presentation ($10). Your gift recipient will receive a one-time-use code by email or mail good to pay for the registration fee for one of these popular sessions!