The Wisconsin Historical Society newspaper and periodicals librarian, Ron Larson, retired on Nov. 3. Larson, who worked at the Historical Society since Dec. 2009, had worked at the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times as library director and researcher for 30 years, from 1978 to 2008.
At the Wisconsin Historical Society, Larson was responsible for the management of one of the largest newspaper collections in the country. Besides the more than 250 titles of Wisconsin community and specialty newspapers, the collection also includes titles from all over North America, including the largest collection in the country of African-American and Native American newspapers, as well as the largest collection of military base newspapers.
While at the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times, Larson directed the installation of an electronic text archive in 1989 and a digital image archive in 1994, while creating in 2000 the newspaper library’s intranet, which provided both newsrooms with access to ready-reference material and hundreds of links to information on the Internet.
From 2009 to 2014, Larson served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies, teaching the course Strategic Information Services, focusing on special and corporate libraries. Topics covered in the course included competitive intelligence, knowledge management, entrepreneurial librarianship, networking, embedded librarianship and data analysis.
During his retirement, Larson will continue to serve on the National Digital Newspaper Program selection committee, helping to choose the titles of historic Wisconsin newspapers that will be added to the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database. Larson will also brush the dust off of his history website, Wisconsin History Day by Day, a resource that provides historical events for every day of the year with over 1500 links to related information. Larson will continue to serve his home church, McFarland Lutheran Church, as historian and archivist.
A native of McFarland, Larson continues to live in his hometown with his wife of 35 years, DeAnn. They have three sons, Karl, 32, Brooklyn, NY; Lars-Erik, 29, St. Paul, MN; and Leif, 25, Brooklyn, NY.
