Available in English Launched August 15, 2011 | Website mnopedia.org | |
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Type of site Internet encyclopedia project Alexa rank 5,257,349 (January 2013) Content license CC-BY-SA 3.0,
public domain,
and all rights reserved | ||
MNopedia is a free English-language encyclopedia project from the Minnesota Historical Society. Funded through a Legacy Amendment Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund grant, it is the first online encyclopedia about Minnesota. The site came online on August 15, 2011 with initial funding of $215,000 for 2010 and 2011. 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 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. Online newspaper MinnPost publishes entries from MNopedia on a weekly basis as well as publishing bimonthly news articles that are later developed into entries for MNopedia.