The University of Wisconsin Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Nanostructu

1

Electronic Government Publication Preservation
Programs An Overview and Some Key Issues
2

Five Major Questions Regarding the Preservation
of Born-Digital Government Information

• Q1 Which information resources merit retention,
  and for how long?
• Q2 How will the review process be accomplished
  in a timely and cost-effective manner?
• Q3 Who will conduct the review?
• Q4 How can the government ensure that the
  technology of tomorrow can read and handle the
  technology of today and yesterday?
• Q5 What type of provisions must agencies make
  for the review and preservation of electronic
  information resources?
• --Hernon Relyea, 1995

3

Four Challenges for the Preservation of Web-based
Government Information

• Capture challenges
• Discovery, identification, review, selection,
  etc.
• Curatorial challenges
• Information organization, access, repository
  management, etc.
• Preservation challenges
• Migration vs. Emulation preservation
  metadata
• Institutional readiness
• Institutional commitment, policies, finance,
  etc.
• --California Digital Library (2003)

4

Emergent Models in State-Level Preservation
Programs for Web-Based Government Information

• Three emergent models
• Bibliocentric Model
• Focuses on publications
• Examples Wisconsin, Connecticut, New Mexico,
  Michigan, etc.
• Technocentric Model
• Focuses on publications
• Example Texas
• Archival Model
• Focuses on preserving certain sections of a state
  agency Web site
• Example Arizona
• -- Pearce-Moses Kaczmarek (2005) Lin
  Eschenfeldr

5

Selection Approaches in the "Publication-Centered
" Models

• Active Selection (Bibliocentric Model)
• Externally-developed digital repository services
  (e.g. OCLC Digital Archive, DSpace, etc)
• Manual publications seeking, review, selection
  by digital depository librarians
• Highly selective
• No existing methodology to safeguard timely
  capture harvest
• --Lin Eschenfelder

6

Selection Approaches in the "Publication-Centered
" Models

• Passive Selection (Technocentric Model)
• Home-grown repository infrastructure
• Based on the states existing GILS service
• Automatic crawlers agency-supplied metadata
• Minimum manual review selection by librarians
• Publication quality varies from agency to agency
• -- Lin Eschenfelder

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Problems Issues in the Current State-Level
Programs

• No existing model is perfect
• All of the models are still in their early stage
  consequences await observation.
• Each model has its strength and weakness

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Problems Issues in the Current State-Level
Programs

• Depository librarians as active selectors
• In the active selection model, the power of
  selection is shifting from government agencies to
  digital depository librarians
• How will librarian selection vs. agency
  selection affect the collection development of
  the digital depositories in the long run?

9

Problems Issues in the Current State-Level
Programs

• The Conceptualization of Government
  Publications on the Web
• What do we mean by government publications?
• In the active selection model, how do the Web
  publications seekers conceptualize in the
  processes of Librarian-Initiated Publication
  Discovery activities?

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• Thank you for your attention!
• Questions? Comments?