 Good morning. My name is Dwight Macenville. I'm the director of the Georgetown County Library, and I have a tendency to talk far too long, so I've consolidated my thoughts into a 30-page document, which I'll read to you very slowly. Whenever I as a resident of a small-town area come to an urban place like this one, I always have an agenda. Urban areas always have so many delightful things locked away in their silos. But getting inside them is sometimes difficult, but they always lead to eureka moments. Here in San Francisco, at the California Historical Society on Wednesday, I had one of those eureka moments. After a speeding taxi ride from the airport, followed by a mad dash from the hotel, I barged into the Historical Society's library and I said, San Francisco, here I am. Help me. And the librarians there did. I found in the Helen Hyde papers a clear link between San Francisco, Chicago, and the Charleston Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, heady stuff to me. But I had to go to that physical location to find that data, and without a subsidy from attending the DPLA as a member of the steering committee, for me that would have been economically impossible. We rural types also have things locked away in our nearly impenetrable vaults that pertain to folks here, for instance, such as letters from a South Carolinian visiting San Francisco a hundred years ago. On April the 17th, 1911, only five years after the great earthquake and the great fire, here's what that visitor said a few excerpts. San Francisco, it is indeed a big bustling, interesting city. There must be many extravagantly rich people here, and many more who are extravagant without the money. Such wonderful shops, and the most exquisite florists everywhere. The city spends more on food and drink than any place I ever saw. About five years ago, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, hello Susan. Sponsored a terrific effort called Connecting to Collections. Connecting to Collections. It educated smaller libraries and museums like mine, especially, about preserving and linking their archives to others. In Georgetown County, South Carolina, where we serve 60,000 people with 30 full-time equivalents at three branches of the Georgetown County Library, we took that message to heart. And here's what we did. Those are hurricanes, and residents here have a special appreciation for buildings, artifacts, photos and memories that have survived. The Georgetown County Library is a part of the preservation through storage and digitization of documents, the creation of oral histories, and the recording of historic places. We've brought all these things together in a vibrant digital library so we can share them with the world. The Georgetown County Digital Library was launched in 2007 and gets an average of two million hits a month. It has over 18,000 images, like 17th century land plots, antebellum newspapers, and of course thousands of historic photos. The history of the nation is shown here in microcosm. Like Georgetown County's gilded plantation era, new technologies of the turn of the century, send these soldiers off to World War I, famous families of the 1920s, the ravages of the Great Depression, World War II operations, and the devastation of Hurricane Udo. We continue to gather collections from rural historic societies and old addicts across the county, adding more pieces to the puzzle of our local past. The Georgetown County Library actively seeks grants that will allow us to preserve the stories of our residents. We have interviewed survivors of the Great Depression, veterans of World War II, folks who weathered local hurricanes, small businesses that have stood the test of time, and local men and women whose personalities and memories are larger than life. We post our videos on our library website, YouTube, and Facebook. DVDs are also available for checkout or can be watched in our state-of-the-art Heritage Center. We also deliver them to local schools when classes are covering these topics. The library has a vibrant creative teen video production program, and our talented youngsters help gather images and information about local historic sites and artifacts. Like Friendfield Slay Village, like the nation's oldest intact sailing vessel, and like a lonely civil war battery, and more. We've produced many documentaries about each site, two of which one honorable mentions from the history channel. These videos can be seen on our library website or checked out for viewing. Each project, each disseminated image, gives the library a chance to not only preserve the past, but also to create a stronger community by sharing processes and products with our local residents. Our efforts have helped bridge the gap between generations, while connecting us with others in America from coast to coast, and with researchers around the world. We've joined with the South Carolina Digital Library, headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, and I think that the value of the Digital Public Library of America will be to engage archives and other collections across the United States to open and to share their content silos and storage warehouses somehow digitally in the urban, small town, and rural America with great ramifications from coast to coast, and beyond our shores. Rural libraries alone encompass 61% of all library systems in the United States. These small libraries serve 64.7 million people, including 14.4% in poverty. Just think what would happen if in the digital realm, if these rural libraries became fully energized, rural and small town libraries are part of the structural, cultural, dark matter filling the spaces between the bright lights of our urban continental universe. These small libraries increasingly the shimmering spheres in their own communities, and for our nation to pulse fully with the creative power and luminosity, the kinetic charges must flow throughout this entire matrix to bring the possibility of eureka moments to everyone. The Digital Public Library is no less than the catalytic lever that we must engage forcefully soon to empower for everyone here and abroad the bright potential American digital renaissance. Thank you.