LC, Partners Will Preserve Bush Administration Web Sites

When presidential (and other) administrations leave office, the contents of their agency web sites too often get scrubbed clean, and that’s a loss for the historical record. With that in mind, the Library of Congress (LC), the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas Libraries, the Internet Archive and the U.S. Government Printing Office announced a collaborative project to harvest and preserve public United States Government web sites from the current Bush administration, which leaves office January 19, 2009.

The Internet Archive will crawl the .gov domain comprehensively. The University of North Texas and the California Digital Library will focus on specific government agencies. The Library of Congress will build on its work preserving Congressional web sites, begun in December 2003. Librarians and other government information specialists will be asked to help select and prioritize web sites for the collection. The Government Printing Office, along with libraries in its Federal Depository Library Program, will advise on the curation process. The University of North Texas has developed a tool to enhance collaboration.

“Digital government information is considered at-risk, with an estimated life span of 44 days for a web site," said Martha Anderson, director of program management at LC’s Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). "This collection will provide an historical record of value to the American people."