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Digital Government Information Initiatives
Current Projects
Persistent Digital Archives and Library System (PeDALS)
The Arizona State Library is building the capabilities to store and provide access to digital information in all forms, including public records and reports created by state and local governments, as well as personal papers, photographs, and other historical records. The materials may be born digital or may be digitized.
Website Archives
The Arizona State Agency Website Archives Collection is composed of websites created by the state agencies of Arizona’s government. The websites are collected on a bi-monthly basis using an automated web crawler operated by the Internet Archive's Archive-it service. This fully searchable collection contains website content from 2007 to present.
The Arizona Centennial Archives Collection includes websites about Centennial events, projects and celebrations. The websites were collected using an automated web crawler operated by the Internet Archive's Archive-it service.
State Publications Collection in Arizona Memory Project
Digitized publications produced by and for Arizona state agencies are available from this online collection, which is updated on a continuing basis. Also included are a few reports that were not published for or by a state agency. These were received from the Legislature for inclusion in the collection.
Past Projects
Arizona Electronic Records Thesaurus
The original thesaurus grew out of a practical need to ensure that different disciplines working together to address problems of electronic records could understand each other. The definitions of key terms are dependent on the context in which those terms are used. 'Record' means one thing to a database program, another to an archivist. The legal definition of 'public record' is broader than the vernacular understanding. The original thesaurus has been superseded by A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Society of American Archivists, August 2005). The new glossary was developed with support from the Arizona State Library and Archives and from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
An Arizona Model for Web Preservation and Access
The Library and Archives is developing a new model for curating a collection of Web documents. The model considers how the basic processes of identification and selection, acquisition, description, reference, and preservation will change in the digital era. It also explores how the fundamental principles underlying those activities must be reconsidered. The model is based on the observation that the organization of Web sites parallels the organization of an archival collection and on the assumption that archival principles of provenance and original order are useful to curate and to provide access to documents in the collection. The model is described in the white paper published in DttP: Documents to the People 33:1 (Spring 2005). Library and Archives staff have been asked to speak about the Arizona Model at the State GILS Conference, the Western Round-Up Archives Conference, the Library of Congress, and the American Library Association, and the model is an important component of the ECHO DEPository Research Project (described below).
Model Assurance Statement for Electronic Recordkeeping Systems
The Library and Archives is developing a program to review agencies' electronic recordkeeping systems to ensure that archival records in those systems are maintained in a trustworthy manner and that they can be transferred to the Archives for permanent preservation. Agencies that wish to keep archival records in an electronic recordkeeping system will enter into an agreement with the Library and Archives that assure they will follow a prescribed methodology to maintain and transfer the records.
New Skills for a Digital Era
A joint project of the Arizona State Library and Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Society of American Archivists, this colloquium brought together librarians, archivists, and records managers with significant experience working with digital information to discuss the practical knowledge these professionals will need to thrive in the digital era.
Web Archives Workbench
In collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and OCLC, the Arizona State Library developed a set of software tools to identify, select, acquire, describe, provide access to, and preserve state agency web publications. This project was part of the ECHO DEPository research project funded by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and administered by the National Science Foundation. Much of this work was based on the Arizona Model. For more information and code, please see http://webarchivwkbnch.sourceforge.net/
The Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving Our Nation's Political Cultural Heritage
In collaboration with the California Digital Library, the Arizona State Library helped develop a set of tools for use by libraries to capture, curate, and preserve collections of web-based government and political information, including state agency publications and campaign literature. This project was funded by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and administered by the National Science Foundation.
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