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>> [Music] I think our history here is really important.
You can't tell the history of Minnesota, or really the history
of the United States without telling the story
that happened here.
We're sitting in a building that's on the site of a treaty
in 1851 between the Dakota Nation
and the United States government.
We have a letter from Thomas van Etten [phonetic],
who was a soldier who was in the Battle of Birch Coulee,
which was one of the battles in the US Dakota War.
We have a copy of the bill
that would have made St. Peter the capital of Minnesota.
And we really do have unique items in the collection
that really help tell the history of America.
And the reality is that the vast majority
of Americans wouldn't know they're here.
Wouldn't know we're here without the Digital Public Library
of America.
>> The Digital Public Library
of America is providing greater access to the materials
that heretofore have been kept in these county
and local historical societies.
>> The Digital Public Library of America, by aggregating metadata
and by making this information discoverable,
really takes the content that we have
in the Minnesota Digital Library; some content
that we have in the Minnesota Historical Society,
and it throws open the door for people to find it
from across the country and across the globe.
>> To me this is going to make it possible
to bring our archives alive.
>> We're talking about material coming
from cultural organizations.
Small, local county historical societies.
Museums. Universities.
National archives.
The Smithsonian.
Harvard, for example.
>> It's helping us get our information out there,
but it's doing something more fundamental than that.
It's really exciting people about history.
>> We have, for 10 years now been about access.
How do we help organizations
across the state share what they have?
And this will give us a chance to share on a National platform.
As the Outreach Coordinator, I travel across the state working
with organizations that are interested in working with us.
Helping them digitize their collections.
Helping them provide access to those collections
through the Minnesota Digital Library
for the people of Minnesota.
>> And it's sort of through these outreach efforts
that we think we can bring more people
into the Digital Public Library of America.
And in turn make this more about the public's library.
>> And I think that these tools, the Minnesota Digital Library.
Digital Public Library of America are going
to help us build and preserve
and honor this contemporary experience.
And preserve it in a way that's going
to enrich this community building.
>> We're really looking beyond just sort
of aggregation digitization.
Looking for new forms of community engagement.
Be this documentary photography.
Oral histories.
Videos.
>> I think there's a tremendous impact and benefit to the public
to be able to have all of these resources
on the Digital Public Library of America.
I mean they really have America at their fingertips.
>> The most fundamental benefit to the public is the ability
to discover information about cultural heritage.
>> The bottom line truth for me as an individual is
that I know I'm passing down to future generations very,
very exciting information and important information
about who we are and how we got to be where we are.
And that's a story that 100 years
from now people are still going to be asking.
>> We're telling our local history but we're really looking
to link that and relate that to a national story.
And I think that participation in things
like the Digital Public Library of America help us do that.
And we're not just telling our individual stories,
but together we're really telling the story of America.
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