University of Minnesota Archives and Special Collections

The opening two sentences of a 17 July article in the Minnesota Daily, the newspaper of the University of Minnesota's main campus, tells the story of why we still need to visit such places in our family history research.


"In the last five years, the University of Minnesota Archives has digitized about 1 million pages of records."

"But that’s only 1 percent of its total content."

I have seen the underground storage of many of these materials and just that part alone was impressive. The article further stated, "The University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections Department houses 16