NDIIPP and Congress

[John Wonderlich]

Just put up a post on preservation of congressional Websites...

Anyone have additional input about how this could work?

Good News Regarding Preservation

August 20th, 2007 by John Wonderlich · No Comments

Overall, I've found it difficult to get a clear grasp on the full scope of digital preservation of congressional websites.  Preservation has been somewhat confusing because the administrative organization of the agencies doing the preservation seems somewhat redundant.  While the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives and Records Administration all have distinct missions, they all engage in very similar preservation work.

Perhaps this seeming redundancy is the reason that we've been unaware that the Library of Congress's National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program is currently listing congressional websites as being among the sites they're actively archiving (under its Web capture program).

It appears that access to the collection reaches only to 2002, so its hard to be confident that this material is still being archived, or how frequently this is being done.

If the Web capture program is an ongoing part of the NDIIPP (despite their likely funding shortfall), and if congressional member and committee webites are still being captured, I wonder if this isn't a chance for NDIIP to partner with either the National Archives, the Clerk's office, or even the Federal Depository Library Program to encourage access and provide redundant preservation?

Providing access to this type of digital record is certainly within the broad mission statements of NARA, or the office of the Clerk, or even the FDLP.

Imagine if this House page or this page had links to archived copies of each member or officer's websites.

--
John Wonderlich

Program Director
The Sunlight Foundation
(202) 742-1520 ext. 234

[Peggy Garvin]

John,

 

Have you spoken with anyone at NARA’s Center for Legislative Archives? If you have not read it yet, you may want to take a look at the minutes of their Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress. Main page: http://www.archives.gov/legislative/cla/advisory-committee/index.html

 

The December 2006 minutes cover digital preservation issues, although mostly about the personal “papers” (now email) of members; for some comments on that, see p. 18 forward, beginning with “Joe Cooper remarked…”. For a brief bit about “harvesting” the websites of the 109^th Congress, see pp 21-22. This web snapshot is available at http://www.webharvest.gov/collections/ .

 

The collection you saw at LOC’s NDIIP site was captured prior to NDIIP’s formation. It is a one-time snapshot of the 107^th Congress, at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/minerva/html/107th/search.html . It was part of a pilot project was called MINERVA. NDIIP now links to it, as does the Library’s “Web Capture Team” page [http://www.loc.gov/webcapture/projects.html].  NDIIP, as far as I can tell, has a mission as broad as LOC’s. They are concerned with all of the world’s information and don’t have the single focus that NARA’s Center for Legislative Archives has. As an example, see the page “What is Being Saved” [http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/library/collect.html].

 

The Center’s advisory committee is supposed to meet 2x/year, so there should be more current meeting minutes forthcoming. But an informational meeting with the right people at the Center may be the best approach.

 

Peggy

 

 

 

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[Peggy Garvin]

Correction:

Rather than

“The collection you saw at LOC’s NDIIP site was captured prior to NDIIP’s formation”

I should have said

“The collection you saw at LOC’s NDIIP site was captured outside of the NDIIP activity”

 

 

Peggy

 

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[John Wonderlich]

Peggy,

Thanks very much. 

I haven't met with anyone from NARA or from the Advisory Committee, so I'll have to look into it.  This is very helpful.

Also of interest for anyone else looking into this, from the link you sent, is a pdf of the Fourth Report of the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress (from December 2006), which provides a great overview of Congress's preservation priorities and challenges.  Also, confusingly enough, they describe an OHP... (from page 11 of the pdf)

The House has worked towards updating records management guidelines for committees.  Originally the House Legislative Resource Center consulted with committees on archival matters and the transfer and retrieval of records with the Center for Legislative Archives, NARA.  When the Office of History and Preservation (OHP) was created in 2002, it became the entity designated to work with committees regarding archival matters.

Looks like they had our abbreviation first.

John

On 8/21/07, Peggy Garvin < pe...@garvinconsulting.com> wrote:

John,

 

Have you spoken with anyone at NARA's Center for Legislative Archives? If you have not read it yet, you may want to take a look at the minutes of their Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress. Main page: http://www.archives.gov/legislative/cla/advisory-committee/index.html

 

The December 2006 minutes cover digital preservation issues, although mostly about the personal "papers" (now email) of members; for some comments on that, see p. 18 forward, beginning with "Joe Cooper remarked...". For a brief bit about "harvesting" the websites of the 109^th Congress, see pp 21-22. This web snapshot is available at http://www.webharvest.gov/collections/ .