 Good morning everyone. I'm John Palfrey and on behalf of the steering committee of the Digital Public Library of America thank you all for being here and most important thank you to Doran and Peter and Lisbeth the founding sponsors of the Digital Public Library that was an announcement of five million dollars for the next 18 months or so If you didn't gather that that was a pretty important thing that this group has just done There are many things that are exciting about this effort mostly I think the extraordinary Gathering of people from so many walks of life and places this morning gathered around the idea that attracts us But I think one central concept is important to note There's a lot of talk in Washington and elsewhere about public-private partnerships But it seems to me this is the embodiment of a really good one right here We just heard about five million dollars on top of a previous million dollars in private capital being contributed to an ad hoc group of all of us We are the DP LA to work together in a way that we haven't before And that joins not just us as citizens of the United States and elsewhere Importantly international partners as we'll hear later today But also our federal government which has I think in unprecedented ways stepped up and said yes We want to participate in this slightly crazy thing too And as the chair of the steering committee I can say that I have been blown away by the extent to which our federal agencies and frankly state and local government agencies to have held up their hands to say let's Work together on this from Carla Hayden in Baltimore and Peggy Redd at the state level in Texas Amazing realm of people on our steering committee to the three people. We are about to hear from now in this report from Washington I think I may have bought enough time for lavalier microphones to be on them So I'm gonna go down the line and we'll hear in this report from Washington from three great friends In some ways three of the best friends of the digital public Library of America effort First Deanna Markham the Associate Librarian of Congress and we've heard reference already to the Library of Congress Which of course has a central role to play in these efforts for many years They've been a leader in the digitization of our nation's cultural and scientific heritage I believe 28 million objects have already been digitized by the Library of Congress as an important centerpiece in I think what we have to work with but more important is the human capital that Deanna Markham herself and her team have brought to this effort Deanna, we love you deeply and are so grateful for all you've done and look forward to hearing from you this morning Yes, it is. Is Lynn Brinley in the room? I have to check to see if Lynn Brinley is in the room before I tell you the Library of Congress is the largest most comprehensive library in the world with There's some Some debate about that But I'll say in in America. How's that? In the collection of the Library of Congress there are 148 million items we have digitized 28 million of those and I liked Peter's comment so much about moving from boutique to the Walmart model because I think What this initiative allows is even though we've digitized a lot of material It isn't enough to be The kind of digital resource that we all believe is important for the country. So we see this as an opportunity to expand and Enhance the work. We've already done I'm I'm filling in today for James Billington the Librarian of Congress and if he were here I think he would want you to know a little bit more about What we've done already and then we can talk together about how we can Leverage what we've done to to meet these needs The the mission of the Library of Congress is to support Congress and fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people It's not unlike the NEH mission. It's not unlike the mission. You'll hear about here The the point is what we are concerned about is making these resources that have been amassed at a great institution by Tax dollars from American citizens and we want to make that as available as possible So that is what brings us to the table The digital public library of America because it it appears to be the kind of opportunity that will help us Fulfill our mission in a very important way So Let me just go into a little detail about what we have done We have a long history of building digital collections It began when in 1987 Dr. Billington was appointed librarian of Congress. He went on a tour of the country and he held Town hall meetings for lack of a better word in ten locations throughout the country and He asked what do you want from the Library of Congress? He met with teachers librarians of faculty in universities and Pretty much the answer was uniformly the same We want your content and we want it where we are not where you are And he took that to heart and he came back to the Library of Congress with the notion that What we must do is make our content more widely accessible Well, the internet hadn't been invented by Al Gore or anyone else yet so We looked to CD-ROM technology to get content out and we began digitizing collections in the very early 1990s and We focused on materials that would be useful to the K to 12 Community because we thought that's where the greatest need was So We were sending CD-ROMs to schools and to libraries and then we went we went back to those we had 44 Pilot institutions and we went back to all of them to find out how they were using the content so we could understand better What else we should try to digitize? What was amazing to everyone involved is that and we thought this would be most useful to high school students In fact all the way down to third grade students were making Incredibly innovative uses of this digital content and we saw that of even with this clunky CD-ROM method Students were beginning to ask important questions about their history And about the world so we Committed to making more and more of our primary source materials available to schools and libraries around the country in 1995 Congress Talked with the Library of Congress about this digitization effort and said If you will raise private money We'll put up some money And there was a Three-to-one match three three part private one part Congress But that really allowed us to expand enormously our digitization efforts Thank you. Yeah, Dave. Thank you. We realized that We had special collections that were held nowhere else in the country we had Manuscripts and music and maps and films and all kinds of things So we began to focus on digitizing those special Collections materials rather than books We were visited by Google when The when Google began to digitize collections We decided that our our focus would be on special formats And we did a little bit of experimenting with Google but in the end we stayed with our primary focus But more recently we've we've begun to think far more broadly about What from our collections should be readily accessible to the American people and We were so pleased when the Sloan Foundation agreed to fund a digitization project that would allow us to identify Public domain books in our general collections and make those available through our website as well And we were funded for two years by the Sloan Foundation, and we've been able to continue The books digitization effort With our own funds, but we are systematically going through our American history Local history and genealogy collections and putting those online as well So before I lose my voice, I will stop by saying We think that the resources that are represented in the federal agencies is A wonderful foundation for the digital public library of America We Excuse me We are so anxious to make our collections available and We we've worked with the National Archives with the Smithsonian. We've worked closely with IMLS We very much look forward to working with Everyone who has contributions to make to this important effort. Thank you Thank you so much and thank you to dr. Billington in absentia for your leadership and for your offers of support and in fact Your actual support on this effort. We will see later this afternoon a treat which is Examples from the beta sprint. There are going to be six large-scale presentations and then three lightning round presentations one of them is entitled digital collaboration for America's national collections which joins the Library of Congress the Smithsonian the National Archives I understand that it's not always the case the threes these three agencies All right coming to the National Archivist It is now so anyway, we're very grateful for that and for all that you've done and all that you will do I have no doubt. Thank you. Our second report from Washington is from another great friend of the DPLA Susan Hildreth Susan has a long background Directing important iconic libraries in the United States has been a champion through this project of all manner of public libraries Including a small special and rural libraries and many respects helped us to identify Dwight McEnville our newest member of the steering committee from the Georgetown County Library in South Carolina And Susan is currently as everyone knows. I think the director of the IMLS which is in many respects Yet another piece of the amazing foundation that supports museums and libraries and the digitization effort and Susan You've been an amazing participant and thank you for being here and we look forward to your report as well Well, thank you John. Good morning everyone, you know, I think in this Rarified audience possibly everybody here may know what IMLS is but just to make sure I'm gonna review just a little bit about what we do We're the Institute of Museum and Library Services And we are a federal agency an executive agency that is primarily responsible for grant making So we distribute the federal dollars for libraries and museums in the United States But as as time has moved on we're a fairly young agency. We were only established in the late 1990s we've taken on some other roles particularly data collection evaluation Policy development and really leadership in the field. So When you think about the role we play with our federal partners library of Congress archives, Smithsonian They have great content IMLS does not have content But we have great access to our nation's museums and libraries and we provide a wonderful Distribution network to the on ramp to our digital library highway if you will So we're really excited to be part of this Adventure which we're all on so again, I'd like to thank the Berkman Center for Internet and Society our wonderful funders the Sloan Foundation as well as Arcadia, and we're very happy to be here today I think some of the key issues we're discussing today And in the future, what should this DPL a B and I think we're we've made great progress We'll continue to do so who really can Participate how can you participate? How will be it? How will it be sustained as a public resource? But From the IMLS point of view and from all the work many of us have done I have another question for us to think about today And that is which products of the previous 20 years of work Can we use in constructing a digital public library of America and what still needs to be created now? This is a key interest for IMLS. I'll explain that we've made a number of investments in digitization all around our nation and We do have some federal resources Diminishing as they may be we want to use them very strategically and we really are very interested in how DPL a is moving forward so we can make strategic investments to support the digitization Efforts that we need to move forward. I think as you've heard a little bit today from Deanna I'll just mention that early in the 1990s federal agencies including the Library of Congress and the National Science Foundation began strongly and visibly supporting digitization and digital library research development and demonstration projects and We know that in the years that followed other federal state and private funders joined in supporting these efforts and in the mid 1990s the newly created IMLS joined the effort with our first digitization project grant awards in 1998 and in the year since our agency's range of digital library investments has has expanded dramatically Some of the things we've been doing include hundreds of digitization projects ranging from the more specialized and focused content to mass digitization of library and archives collections and a great partnership with the University of Illinois to aggregate metadata So users can more easily discover these collections. You'll see that in one of the clear beta sprint project this afternoon We have been building projects We've been funding projects building tools that enhance how people create use manage and preserve digital content We have supported the advance of digital libraries such as the ongoing Multi-partner project managed at the University of Michigan documenting title by title copyright status of more than 500,000 books published in the US 1923 to 63 we have supported collaborations at all levels with a wide variety of partners and particularly of note the statewide digitization projects that are now existence in more than 40 states We've applied we've developed applied research ranging from the examination of the online Information-seeking behavior of teens to investigations of the best methods for preserving instructional video games We are also committed to training a High-class quality workforce who can become our digital Navigators of the 21st century and as you all know I think our library schools are they're doing a great job in moving us forward need some additional assistance in developing 21st century digitally Competent librarians and that's a key role for IMLS We also are providing support for national conversations Important to the future of digital libraries a good example is an upcoming meeting of invited experts and leaders to help map out a Blueprint for the public libraries role in the emerging emerging digital public library of America We're going to be holding that in Los Angeles in mid-November at the Los Angeles public library. Thanks to the work and the collaboration of Martin Gomez City Librarian so These ongoing and early investments by IMLS and other sponsors both public and private have advanced digital library practice in ways That might not have been possible without such coordinated and sustained support So here we are what is our next step? I think we're at a critical point of moving forward in this world And what kinds of new organizations do we need to provide the services that have been provided previously? I think we want to recognize that we have a lot of information available for our designers and builders of Dpla to develop their efforts on we have developed a critical mass of born digital and retrospectively digitized collections already We have many elements of existing digital library infrastructure. We have developed systems and tools Models standards best practices and policies and I think fortunately we have organizations many of whom are here today who are willing to build maintain and Monitor and support these digital collections But one other resource that we have that's available to all of us to help jumpstart the Dpla is that we have the record And I'm sure the archives has much of this of journals conference proceedings planning documents reports of 20 years Of a national and international discussion on what digital libraries should be who can participate and how they can be sustained Those same questions that are facing us today and just from the I am a less point of view where we have invested in a rather Disaggregated effort all across the country and we would really like to have our efforts be sustainable And also available to be evaluated and have the impact on our users shown We just have a couple of lessons learned that we wanted to share with all of you first of all in digitization It's difficult to go it alone. Don't go it alone collaboration is key to long-term success And I can see all of us gathered here today are really Demonstrating that the traditional understanding of the relationship between information providers and consumers is changing and both can benefit From working together in new ways Digital libraries have clearly demonstrated their potential to reduce Administrative technical and other barriers to information access something that we're all being asked to do constantly particularly with limited resources But we still have a long way to go and seeing the fullest realization of their potential to transform How libraries archives and museums function who they serve how those individuals are served and ultimately how can they transform? individuals and community lives We also want to make sure that we Follow some of the key principles that we've been following at IMLS We try to make sure all our grantees follow interoption interoperability which is critical and preservation of digital information resources We had a great discussion about that yesterday and some of our grouping working groups about persistence And how if someone is involved in DP LA we must have the responsibility to take care of that data That's a huge concern of everyone here. We want to make sure we address rights for access and the use of content Make sure our programs and services are sustainable and find new ways to measure the impact to our public And I think another big question we're dealing with is this all sounds great But what is the difference going to be for a person who's going on the web and wants to find information? And I know we can find the answers to that question I'm very pleased to be here, and I'm particularly pleased because I hope that I am LS can be very strategic and supporting our efforts in the future I might briefly just try out two themes that you mentioned Susan one is one way in which I think the Entire DP LA project can be successful is not just if it brings support into a single Secretariat or it's kind of central force But in fact if it creates a platform that allows for better coordination of the funding that you and many others are doing Into libraries all across the country and other kinds of institutions that are a part of this and that if what we merely do is do more With what we are already doing and coordinate better. I think we will have succeeded in a part I think we can do much more than that, but I think that's a very important initial concept and second you mentioned the Excitement and the possibilities of having a new crowd of librarians who are coming up through library schools The archivist mentioned that our friends at Simmons in Boston have a room set aside where people right now are watching this being streamed to Simmons I think we should give them a special hello again But I can say that in since we've started this process the number of library students and the number of People in library schools have also raised their hand and said we want to participate. Let's figure this out It's very very encouraging and exciting and thank you for supporting that effort as well So the last report from Washington is from a man who truly does need no introduction particularly in this house But I'm gonna do it anyway. This is in David Ferriot the archivist the United States. We have an amazing leader who is now Leading this institution that we're in he comes from the New York Public Library where he was the Mellon director of the New York Public Libraries and Before that director of the MIT libraries and Duke This is someone who has been a friend in every possible way to the effort that I think is coming together and coalescing today It's extremely fitting that you are our host today, Mr. Ferriot, and thank you so much for all you've done And we're very much looking forward to your particular report from Washington as well Well before I start Susan have your records been scheduled. Yes So why do you why do you have 20 years sitting over there? Oh Okay, that's one to do the other is Brewster get your bank details to Peter and See we're making progress. This is great So how many of you for how many of you is this your first visit to this building? As I expected So I need to tell you who we are because we're the best kept secret in town The National Archives is the nation's record keeper That means we're responsible for all the records of the 275 federal agencies and the White House And we provide courtesy storage for all the records of Congress We opened our doors in 1935. It was FDR described this as his baby He was very much involved in the planning of the National Archives So it's amazing that what we have in terms of records before 1935 have survived exposed to fire theft flood all kinds of horrible horrible situations wonderful story of records being stored in the Garage at the White House during the Hayes administration in Rutherford B. Hayes himself outside on the lawn in a fire brigade Putting out the fire in the White House garage We have records that start with the Continental Congress The oaths of allegiance signed at Valley Forge all the way up to the tweets that are being created in the White House as we sit Here today, that's our mandate We have 44 facilities around the country from Anchorage, Alaska to Atlanta, Georgia and I love this debate between Library of Congress and British Library about size get over it We have 12 billion pages of textual records 40 million photographs 600 600,000 artifacts in the presidential libraries And the growing the largest growing collection, of course electronic content billions of electronic records right now in our custody the Presidential Records Act, which is one of the sets of laws that govern my work recognized electronic mail in 1996 so we started collecting email from the Reagan administration with eight million email messages from that administration 20 million from the Clinton administration and 210 million from the George W. Bush administration and As the president likes to tell me when I see him in Dallas not one of those is mine So our customers are researchers genealogists veterans the the general public Congress and the White House using our records all the time and I have a an ulterior motive my reason for being so passionate about the digital library is that I want Every stinking piece of this collection digitized. I want it available to the world 24 hours a day And as you heard from John, I've been in this business for a long time and I can still remember at Duke University faculty members coming to me complaining because their students were doing all their research online and I can remember discussions with my librarians about how are we going to get them to use the paper materials Get over it. What can we do to get that stuff digitized? How how can we facilitate the creation of it because I am convinced if it's not online It doesn't exist. So instead of fighting it. How can we make that happen? And that's why I'm so So interested in in this project So let me tell you a little bit about of that massive amount of material that we have We have done such a small fraction of of that content We have established commercial partnerships with Ancestry comm and family search and genealogists are are one of our biggest markets And we've done a very small percentage of passenger lists pension files civil war revolutionary war records to to get that material in people's hands, but the the Massive amount of material that we have to do has caused us to be rather creative in Ways of creating new kinds of opportunities. Some of you may have seen the citizen archivist program that Has been launched through the National Archives and your dashboard. Is it up? Okay, soon you'll see the dashboard giving opportunities for the people to get involved in helping us process our records We also are using them to help digitize our records. We have a civil war conservation Corps Upstairs in this very building working on these are retirees who are working not from the civil war Who are working on civil war records preparing them for digitization we've got something called doc's teach which is up now has about 5,000 of our primary sources that are loaded with lesson plans and a Facility for teachers to talk to each other a share lesson plans and and share uses of the material So we're trying in all different kinds of angles to make as much of our content Available as possible that as I said the reason I'm so interested in this But it's also I think I want to give you a concrete example of the power of this kind of digital collection I Was at the New York Public Library for five years When I was being interviewed I had to sign a nondisclosure statement So that Paula Claire the president could talk to me about the Google book project So I spent five years working with Google. We digitized about a million books public domain from the New York Public Library collection and I saw Slowly saw the power of Researchers having access to that broad body of information and how it has already transformed scholarship So I have a wonderful in-house story about Google books in December 2009 the president issued an executive order creating the National Declassification Center here at the National Archives Which gave me the mandate to review 400 million pages of classified content with the mandate to Release as much as possible only two criteria Weapons of mass destruction and national security could be used to keep them classified So it's a process that we have launched working with the agencies who have equities in the content And we've reviewed we've reviewed about over a million pages now and and have released Of those that have gone through the full analysis have released 91 percent to the open shelves So we're making great progress the oldest these in these records go back to World War one 1917 and in April I am so pleased that the CIA finally caved on the six oldest documents Six documents of they were German formulas for secret ink Which had been foyid forever people have been trying to get at these Leon Panetta before he left the CIA a big press conference announcing the fact that he's really he's releasing these documents What he didn't say is that he released them because my staff Used Google books and discovered that these formulas have been published in 1931 I That's what it's all about Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Another of the amazingly exciting things I think that lie ahead are the many different use cases and stories that we'll hear about I think of precisely that sort I think it's not at all surprising this room is filled not just with Librarians and those of us who are in the information business, but professional historians in professor Dernton and professor Baldwin and Professor snap and lots of people here who are historians and researchers who are here because I think there's a sense of opportunity Not just for democracy, but for specific projects and specific research that we simply can't do today But that we will be able to do before too long another auspicious sign. I think of this project is Speakers have kept to their time. So we actually have some time for some discussion in this report from Washington There are microphones on either side over here and some great friends from the Berkman Center who I'm sure will run them around if people don't want to go from the middle to the To come have a comment I would remind you that we are in an Augusta place And you are being recorded and this is no doubt going to be kept for history So I'd be grateful if you would keep the questions for our speakers And I neglected to say for those of you who haven't been here before you need to carve out some time to get up Into the rotunda to see the declaration the the constitution of the Bill of Rights The public vaults that surround the rotunda have samples of records from the archives And in the special gallery, there is a wonderful exhibit called what's cooking Uncle Sam and it's about the government's role in Telling you what to eat I can't help while people are hopefully thinking of their question of acknowledging my mother who's here today Judy Paul free I'm doing that I'm doing that because it relates to let's this food exhibit. She's in charge of the first ladies Let's move initiative great to get people to be Fitter both through activity and through their eating and so I noticed the obvious connection between the archives And actually I know I am a less is doing much on this issue as well So I'm hoping to drag her into the digital library's world Inviting her to the archives. All right. There must be a question by now I have no other relatives to announce in the audience Oh Please thank you and may I'd love to privilege Bob Darn if you would take us an X question You must have something that we could put the mic in front of you for Hi, yeah, I'm Miku from Drexel and In the presentations, we've heard a lot about accessibility and so on I just wondered if you would speak to the difference between accessibility and discover ability because I think there are different technical challenges with Putting stuff on mind versus been able to find stuff in the stuff once it's online It's terribly important, of course. I mean you're looking at three people who don't know how to do that The reason you are well, you may not Depends on how you define discover ability one of the things that Josh Greenberg not to point single him out taught me when When he came to the New York Public Library was We have a horrible history of building these digital libraries and then expecting people to find us So let's think about where are the people? And let's get our stuff out there So Convincing us to use YouTube and Flickr and those kinds of things to get our content into the eyes of people so that they can discover It's a huge problem for me here because our records are so massive and complex and the Thing that a new learning experience here is that kids today can't read cursive and all of my old records You know are in cursive so one of the wonderful things on the dashboard that you'll see is an opportunity for you to help us transcribe and Last week I transcribed my first document I think in your question when when you speak about accessibility you're talking about Making material available to be seen or identified, but I also think Accessibility is a much broader issue in terms of making the great content We have available to all kinds of individuals with accessibility challenges and those could be Visually impaired it could be language language challenges. So so accessibility. I think Universal accessibility is really important But I totally agree with you that if you have a lot of stuff out there and nobody can find it What is the use of it? So I think one of the things that I am LS is very interested in supporting is different strategies platforms approaches to effective discovery and I mean there are many other Entities in Washington and even privately that would be willing to support development of those kinds of platforms or strategies, but I mean that that is a very good example For me, you know better discovery tools of how I am LS could help use your federal dollars To support this initiative, but I would just like to echo I think we haven't talked all that much about accessibility here But I am assuming and I'll speak for the audience that I think it's a key priority that all of our information is Available in many different formats to many different individuals and there's another there's another aspect of this that This is a lesson. I learned at MIT that around serendipity and how do we make it possible for people to have that same Serendipity experience because that's where discoveries come from Bring a microphone, but professor Darden in the meantime if you would are I would like to hand the microphone back to you John I think all right, but there's someone I would like to pass it this way. Actually, thanks Thank you. I'm Nancy Gwen. I'm the director of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, and I just wanted to Since the Smithsonian was mentioned as one of the three agencies who are trying to develop I just wanted to mention to the audience that we also are very interested in participating in the DP LA with our 137 million objects as we're talking numbers today This is a good kind of competition, right? How much they can contribute well, I have to follow that up by saying a hundred twenty four million of them are natural history specimens How many mosquitoes we want to have in the DP LA is a question you tell us But we also and I think you have seen in the press that Secretary Wayne club has said that he also Wants to share the Smithsonian's riches with the nation and the world in many ways and We already have six point four million digitized objects and are trying to go forward as fast as we can So we're in a kind of unique position to pull in Museum library and archives objects together and to help Figure out how that best can be done for the DP LA and and for the nation. So I I'm eager to continue to cooperate and work in this and Share our riches with all of you Thank you to secretary club who I knew would have been here today But for a board of trustees meeting of extraordinary conflict minor details We've had extraordinary support from your colleague also Martin who's chairing the technical aspects work stream So the Smithsonian has been very actively involved and we look forward to much more to come as we digitize those insects insects and other good things Who else this cannot be a quiet crowd it seems implausible My name is Lazy Ashby and I'm I have a question about your statement regarding the CIA documents that were disclosed My brother and I have had freaking conversations who works for Ray Theon and does rocket scientists work for military and he and I have had in many conversations about Reverse engineering and the dangers of that so in his field that and I was curious about You know the disclosure of you know the release of certain CIA documents And if there are any mechanisms in place to sort of monitor that To kind of avoid those sort of reverse Intelligence I guess in this case I don't want to give the impression that the archivist of the United States has the authority to release the authority given to me in that executive order is to get the agencies that hold the equities around the table to Review the content to ensure that it really is classified So it was the CIA who released it Not the National Archives So I just facilitated the process Okay, do you anticipate more I guess I don't want to use the word well We as I said we've done a million so far. There are 400 million in this body And it has to be done by December 31st, 2013 I should I should also tell you in this room We had two open forums for the public to come and advise us on which records are of most interest This is a you know just so we could get some citizen participation in helping us prioritize and I hosted both of those meetings and The room was evenly split in both cases the Kennedy assassination conspiracy UFOs All right, oh, yes, please let's actually Jordan can we go with John Mayer since he has not yet spoken and then you'll get next Actually, that's I was the Mike's coming across name Lynn Brinley Please tell the we know who you are, but please tell the world don't as you've Mentioned the British Library here. I am and I'm delighted to be here today And I'm not even going to get into arguments about size I mean there are disadvantages of scale, of course It's like turning a very big oil tanker in whatever direction you want to go and it's always too slow So for those of you who have small and agile institutions sometimes that can be a very major advantage First of all, I'm really delighted to be here and thank you Bob for inviting me Happen to coincide with a visit to the state. So I was really delighted to be able to stay on to be here today Like the Library of Congress, we're a library we say of the world and for the world So we share absolutely your aspiration to open up our great collections of all cultures in all languages to the world We've digitized a lot, but it's a drop in the ocean. I would say we've got quite a lot of boutiques They're mostly we've got shops within shops, but they're all disconnected. They're opportunistic In the most positive way, but nevertheless don't make a digital library And I think one of the real challenges is what is the difference between a digital library and And a wonderful But confusing and if you like random set of resources, and I think that's one of the challenges That you and we need to face I Think public-private partnerships have been mentioned. I think we in the UK because of our History are very much into public-private partnerships for these things But we do have and you will hear from Jill Cousins who I Sort of at the back there on Europeaner. We have got some coherence being brought in the European context Through the European Library, which will be a sort of aggregator of libraries of Europe research libraries And national libraries into the border cultural museum library and archive service, which is European Can I also mention metadata we have just Opened up all of our metadata on a CC zero license, which means It was a braver step than you perhaps might imagine In part because we have a particular government that requires me to earn money That's not always comfortable place to be so we said well We don't think that's quite right for this So we've opened up the 16 million of our metadata of our national bibliography to the world for any purpose And we have got hackathons and mashups and everything happening in the most extraordinary way So I suppose another lesson is You have no idea what this is going to be used for you can't plan for it And it will be infinitely more creative The wider this thing gets opened up So I think metadata is actually a key part or a key consideration of this I think also we've done a lot of work and we're beginning a long journey on what we Label it's the wrong label. I think but digital curators Modern curators modern library professionals. I think that's probably a challenge. We all share And people who are as comfortable with large data sets text mining data mining all of those things as with perhaps our traditional Services So I could give you many examples of what we've digitized as much more to go and We intend to go as fast as we can from a variety of sources It's often said that perhaps the UK is the bridgehead between North America and Mainland Europe I Would like to suggest that we're probably a good stopping off point And if there are opportunities perhaps in this program, we would be delighted to host something In London at the British Library As you take this journey forward. So we're part of the journey with you and we're delighted I'm delighted to be here with you today. Thank you. Thank you Team Lynn Brindley, we will take you up on that kind offer to host an event no doubt at your house as well I should note that one other thing you didn't brag about but should have in a way is Some of the research coming out of the British Library in terms of how young people use information is some of the best research I think that we have and one of the reasons I think you have that serendipity and those wonderful things as you've come to understand this concept of Generativity that if we make available these tools and metadata and content people will do young people and older People too amazing things with it. So thank you for that leadership as well Great, so I'm gonna go to John mayor and then Bob Darden and Storn and then we'll take a break My name is John mayor from the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction. I want you to use your imagination, so it's 2016 and All of your collections have been digitized. I'm assuming this will only take five years, of course And I've heard an awful lot of excitement for that process and for the science and how we're going to do that and I'm excited to but What what does society get? How does society? Improve or change Once that's in place and it's happened. What's the what's the science fiction of of this of the DPLA? Well, I can speak for myself If we assume and I think most of us in this room do that People benefit from having Access to information resources. They can make better decisions for themselves. They can understand where they've come from and possibly a Better direction of where they're going. They can understand world cultures. They can understand The questions they have about you know any number of things I think what we've all been trying to do by collecting these resources It's making sure they are available to people who want to use them in any way they They want It's what we've always talked about in libraries for the whole My whole career we've talked about wanting to get these materials out to people We finally have a mechanism for doing that and I don't know that For me that it's any more than that just making it available most of the resources in our public institutions are there because Americans have paid for them and it seems only right to share them For me it's Creating a better informed citizenry the records here Should be used to hold our government accountable for their actions and for us to be able to understand our history that Statue outside past this prologue We should be learning from our history and The only way you can do that is to have access to the records and People don't have that kind of access right now. So I'm hoping that we create a more informed citizenry in this process Personally think It's an amazing opportunity as my colleagues have echoed I also think that if everything is digitized I think as a as a practicing public librarian the question comes to mind well What happens to our physical facility? Even if we may be aggregating and curating data for our customers. Do we still have do we still have a place? for people to gather and I think that by providing all that information and providing the Empowerment of that information to our citizens It will even create a greater need and a greater desire for people to work together as we've heard from the British library The stuff is out there all kinds of mash-ups are happening and people may be relating in the virtual world and in the physical world but but I think it's a very exciting and liberating future for our Communities and citizens. I think the other question. I have and this is kind of wearing another hat Is you know if we're going to have all this data out there? We must have connectivity to homes and libraries and schools strong connectivity. Thank you But we're going to really need it and and I think that the more we make this rich content available People will understand and and adopt because they want to be there, too They want to know what's happening along with everybody else, so I think it's a great hallmark for the future Thank you Susan last words going to go to Robert Darden I did want to acknowledge Jill Nishie and her colleague Nelson Cruz from the Gates Foundation Who were the ones just think there for a lot of the connectivity to Americans? Libraries think that was that is an amazing piece of this infrastructure of ideas I think that Chairman Leitch mentioned before Bob Darden last word Not at all the last word for this session until a break We've had a question session, but you may have noticed that a lot of it has taken the form of testimonials And it's wonderful to see the support expressed from the Smithsonian as well as from these three Institutions represented on stage and it's great that Dame Lynn Brindley has just invited us all to London We accept that thank you very much Graphic artists. I hope there's some great drawings that are coming up here on these parts The point I want to make though is that When we considered what we should name this thing one of the suggestions was a National digital library and it was rejected Because this is there's nothing nationalistic about this at all We may go from what Lynn Brindley calls the boutique phase to what Peter Baldwin calls the Walmart phase Getting bigger and so on but getting bigger means getting more International and that is certainly going to happen. I should say that Bruno Racine the Director of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Wanted to be here says I can't speak for him, but he says he is with us We have a Jill Cousins representing Europeana and the 27 countries that furnish this great European digital library It's an international effort. So these expressions of support from lots of different US Institutions as well as everyone scattered around the country, especially in public libraries in small towns What this represents? I think is a movement a movement that has nothing nationalistic about it But that goes back to the international Republic of letters that was dreamt of in the period of enlightenment So I hope that we're getting this feeling that we can actually make happen What was a utopian dream at the founding of this country? That sounds a little pious. I apologize, but I couldn't resist Thank you I hope you will join me first in thanking the panel but also thanking Professor Darden who I think also deserves an additional round of applause for His leadership intellectual and otherwise in this effort. We've had an amazing amazing group come together and will come together So thank you pan less. Thank you Professor Darden and all others