Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials - NARA. Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016 May 2008 Introduction The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the Government agency that preserves and provides access to the U.S.
Government's collection of documents recording the important events in American history. Our archival holdings number more than 10 billion pages of unique documents, many of them handwritten, and include formats such as maps, charts, aerial and still photographs, artifacts, and motion picture, sound, and video recordings. This Strategy for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, 2007-2016 builds from the NARA Strategic Plan (Preserving the Past to Protect the Future: The Strategic Plan of the National Archives and Records Administration, 2006-2016) in the area of strategies for expanding public access to our important historical holdings through digitization. Scope This document does not address permanent records in our custody that are "born digital. " Digital Information 250 Years From Now - ReadWriteWeb.
The US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has apparently decided to end its policy of taking a "digital snapshot" of all public congressional and federal web sites after each congressional and presidential term.
According to NARA, which is understandably drawing heat for the policy change, they shouldn't need to archive those web sites because federal agencies and congress should be doing their own archiving. I read about NARA after reading a very timely piece from Leland Rucker about the nature of information archiving in a totally digital world, and it got me wondering: what happens to all this content on the web 250 years in the future?
Last year Google's archives touched 100 exabytes of data from the web. To put that in perspective, that's about 107 billion gigabytes (or, over a half a million 200 GB hard drives). The entire catalog of the Library of Congress is about 136 terabytes -- which makes Google's archive the data equivalent of 771,000 Libraries of Congress. Blog Archive » NARA decides to leave Federal web records to Inte. The diligent bloggers at the Free Government Information tipped me off to another NARA topic that requires publicizing.
FGI quotes a post at .govwatch, citing a NARA memo (NWM 13.2008) which states, in part: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) preserved a one-time snapshot of agency public web sites as they existed on or before January 20, 2001, as an archival record in the National Archives of the United States. NARA also conducted a harvest (i.e., capture) of Federal Agency public web sites in 2004 and of Congressional web sites in 2006. See considering our other records management program priorities for FY 2008, availability of harvested web content at other “archiving” sites (e.g., www.archive.org), and the resources required for conducting and preserving a government-wide web snapshot, NARA has determined that we will not conduct a web harvest or snapshot at the end of the current Administration.
This seems, at the very least, a public relations error. Blog Archive » NARA latest digitization agreement: One archivist. As regular readers know, I used to work at the National Archives.
Since starting this blog, I’ve avoided writing much about NARA because I worried that if was too critical people would think I was trying to get back at someone for something, or that if was too supportive people would think I was just a shill for my old employer. But I read a post a few days ago called “The NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent” on a blog I admire, Free Government Information, and I felt I needed to write a response. The authors at FGI are advocates for, clearly, free government information. As an archivist and a former employee of NARA, I am an advocate for the broadest possible public access to NARA’s holdings, as well as for the general welfare of NARA as an institution.
I am also keenly aware of the challenges NARA’s mission presents and the limited resources it is being given to carry out its mission. Now, about the microfilm issue. What can be done? That’s my perspective. Be Sociable, Share!