MINNESOTA WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION:

Compilation of the Annals of Minnesota was initiated by the Minnesota Federal Writers' Project in July, 1938. The project also was referred to as the Minnesota Annals and the Minnesota Newspaper Annals. Its purpose was to create a comprehensive reference file of historical information transcribed from articles published in Minnesota newspapers. The file was to serve as a resource for workers engaged in writing the publications produced by the Minnesota FWP when the FWP had no further use for the file; it was to be transferred to the Minnesota Historical Society and made available to the public.

The initial plan called for transcribing newspaper articles from the territorial period to the present. However, the Annals project was discontinued before work was completed, when defense and war activities became the first concern of the FWP. At the close of the project, work was considered completed for 1849-1887. Many annals also were gathered for 1888-1922, and some were compiled for 1941-1942.

Workers searched for articles containing information on Minnesota at the St. Paul and Minneapolis public libraries and at the Minnesota Historical Society library, and transcribed them in longhand onto mimeographed forms. They were provided with an outline of topical headings and subheadings to guide them in selecting articles for transcription; this list may be found in the "Instructions to workers preparing the Annals" contained on rolls 1, 46, and 142. Some articles were copied in their entirety; longer ones were partially copied and/or abstracted. In addition to transcribing the article, workers recorded information on the article's source (including the name, date, and place of publication of the newspaper, the column and page numbers on which the article appeared, the library at which the newspaper was consulted and the date, and the transcriber's name).

The best items were edited; typed onto mimeographed forms with multiple copies; assigned one or more subject and/or geographical headings and subheadings; and filed according to year, topic, and place. The original form was placed in the Chronological File; the copies were appropriately placed in the Subject Files and/or the Geographical Files. According to the Minnesota FWP's final report, approximately 145,000 annals were copied in longhand and approximately 90,000 were selected for inclusion in the final file.

The Annals became the property of the Minnesota Historical Society sometime in the early 1940s. The Chronological File, the Subject Files, and part of the Geographical Files were housed in the Society's Newspaper Department until 1958, when they were transferred to the Manuscripts Division, later part of the Division of Library and Archives. At some point, a portion of the Geographical Files was deposited with the Minnesota Geographic Board. These records were transferred to the Minnesota State Archives, which is administered by the Division of Library and Archives, in 1985.

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The original typewritten Annals are arranged in a single chronological sequence by month, day, and year.

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These carbon copies of the Annals are arranged in alphabetical order according to the subject headings and subheadings assigned by the Federal Writers' Project workers. The transcripts for each subject heading or subheading are generally in chronological order. However, the transcripts for each subheading used with the heading "Names" are arranged as follows: those containing a reference to only one name are in alphabetical order, while those containing two or more names are in chronological order.

Two files previously filed with the Subject Files - "Counties" and "Twin Cities" - have been incorporated into the Geographical Files, where they appear more logically to belong.

A closely related set of papers in the Minnesota Historical Society has been microfilmed following the main body of Subject Files: a file of transcripts of newspaper articles entitled "Lumbering in Minnesota," 1884-1897. The handwritten and typed transcripts were made by Frank Vanasek, apparently when he was a FWP worker in Minnesota ca. 1941-1942. It is not known why these transcripts were not incorporated into the Annals. They were transferred to the Society in 1984 from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. In addition to articles related to lumbering, the Vanasek papers contain transcripts pertaining to conservation, including fishing, hunting, and trapping, fish propagation and fish hatcheries, wolf bounties, the Minnesota Game and Fish Commission, and drainage in the Red River Valley, The transcripts are arranged in a single chronological sequence, which is the way they were arranged when they arrived at the Society.