''MNopedia: The Minnesota Encyclopedia'' is a free

English-language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

encyclopedia project from the

Minnesota Historical Society The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Educational institution, educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the Minnesota Terr ...

. Funded through a Legacy Amendment Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund grant, it is the first

online encyclopedia An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Some examples include pre-World Wide Web services that offered the '' Academic American Encyclopedia'' beginning in 1980, Enc ...

about

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

, a "resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events, and things in Minnesota history". Approved by Minnesotans on November 4, 2008, planning took place in 2010, the site was built in 2011 and was online on August 15; initial funding for 2010 and 2011 was $215,000. Many of the articles produced by the encyclopedia are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License as are some of its multimedia files. The Minnesota Historical Society had previously planned to produce a print encyclopedia, but opted for an online site for the sake of affordability and interactivity. MNHS paid history scholars including

Rhoda Gilman ''Rhoda'' is an American sitcom television series created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns starring Valerie Harper that originally aired on CBS for five seasons from September 9, 1974 to December 9, 1978. It was the first spin-off of ''The Ma ...

and Annette Atkins to compose essays for the site and the historical society also awards grants for the creation of entries on select topics. MNopedia is queryable via

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

. Online newspaper ''

MinnPost ''MinnPost'' is a nonprofit online newspaper in Minneapolis, founded in 2007, with a focus on Minnesota news. Content and format The site does not endorse candidates for office or publish unsigned editorials representing an institutional posit ...

'' publishes entries from MNopedia on a weekly basis as well as publishing bimonthly news articles that are later developed into entries for MNopedia. Linda Cameron is the Project Manager. The article on the

Wealthy Apple The Wealthy is an American apple cultivar, and was the earliest to thrive in the Minnesota climate. Horticulturalist Peter Gideon Farmhouse, Peter Gideon grew it after years of trial and error with various apple varieties, and the fruit was descri ...

is a staff and internet favorite; under CC-By-SA attribution it was imported from MNopedia into

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

in 2012.

References

External links

* {{Portal, Internet, United States Internet properties established in 2006 Online encyclopedias Minnesota Historical Society 21st-century encyclopedias Encyclopedias of U.S. states American online encyclopedias