Please join me in welcoming the Pope County Historical Society, a new member of the CollectionSpace community. The Historical Society was recently awarded a grant from the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Grants Program to work with CollectionSpace program staff to extend the software to better support the needs of historical societies and other collecting organizations with history, material culture, and ethnographic collections. Work on the project will begin in January 2015, with a draft historical society extension set available for public comment and evaluation by June. Founded in the 1930s, the Pope County Historical Society maintains a collection of over 7000 objects, plus an extensive collection of photographs, books, and documents. Its collection is representative of many local historical societies in that it contains works of art, natural history specimens, documents, newspapers, textiles, photographs, books, audio and video recordings, archives, and three dimensional objects ranging from thimbles to tractors. We look forward to working with Ann Grandy, Collection Manager, and the rest of the Pope County staff on this exciting project, and to improving support for the local history community. Best regards, Megan Megan Forbes CollectionSpace Community Outreach and Support Manager megan.forbes@lyrasis.org 800.999.8558 x 2917 Main 917.267.9676 Cell meganbforbes Skype