The following blog post was written by Margaret Bresnahan from Minnesota Public Radio.
I’m writing to share the next installment in the American Archive success story. Thanks to the cataloging done during the American Archive inventory project, Minnesota Public Radio was able to identify about 900 MPR News stories covering the Hmong settlement in Minnesota, with recordings dating from 1975 to present day. This discovery led to a collaboration with the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), informing an exhibition/celebration that launches this month (March 2015), and it led to new broadcasts from the MPR News Room.
Marking the 40th anniversary of the first large-scale arrival of Hmong people in Minnesota, MPR News recently launched a Hmong collection page and broadcast a few news stories–all using archive recordings to tell the story of Hmong-Minnesotans. Two of our main collaborators in the News Room plan on continuing the coverage throughout the year, bringing more archive recordings on air and online. This is a wonderful example of the power of access. The inventory made it clear that these recordings existed and enabled this great use of archive material to tell a contemporary, ongoing story.
Here are some links to the archive usage, and more are to come:
- MPR News: Hmong Collection page: http://www.mprnews.org/topic/hmong-in-minnesota
- MPR News with Tom Weber: “From the MPR Archives: 40 years of Hmong migration to U.S.”: http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/02/bcst-hmong-mpr-archives
- MPR News feature, “’We are Hmong Minnesota’: a 40-year journey remembered”: http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/02/we-are-hmong-minnesota
- MPR News, Greg Barron documentary, “Trampled Grass,” http://www.mprnews.org/story/1979/12/29/archive-trampled-grass
- MNHS: “MNOpedia” article, references a number of recordings from the MPR Archives: http://www.mnopedia.org/event/election-mee-moua-minnesota-senate-2002
- MNHS: “We Are Hmong Minnesota” exhibit page: http://www.minnesotahistorycenter.org/exhibits/we-are-hmong-minnesota
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