Preserving State Government Digital Information

Introduction

In 2008, the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) funded four initial state-level projects, including Minnesota's A Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information, a multi-year project to work with selected state legislatures in exploring methods to preserve and provide access to legislative materials in digital form.

The Minnesota Historical Society led the effort of this project in partnership with the Minnesota Revisor’s Office, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, the California Digital Library, California’s State Library and State Archives, the California Legislative Counsel, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other participating states included Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont.

The project concluded in December 2011. The Center for Archival Resources On Legislatures (CAROL) is the final product of the Minnesota NDIIPP project. CAROL pulls together research information and other resources on pertinent topics related to the preservation of and access to digital legislative content, while the Final Report summarizes project activities.

(Note: A final report about all of the four state NDIIPP initiatives can be found here.)

Announcements of Project Activities (November 2011 - February 2012)

Center for Archival Resources On Legislatures (CAROL) made available online (February 2012)
MHS's NDIIPP Final Report submitted to the Library of Congress and made available online (February 2012)
Tessella's Final Report posted online (February 2012)
Authentication of Primary Legal Materials and Pricing Options white paper posted (January 2012)
Final All Partners Meeting information posted (January 2012)
Basic information on XML posted (December 2011)
Inventory Project report posted (December 2011)
Report from Sunlight Foundation posted (December 2011)
Minnesota's final report on the Tessella Pilot Project posted (December 2011)
XSD document of metadata schema posted (December 2011)
Authentication Options meeting summary posted (November 2011)
Authentication Methods white paper posted (November 2011)
Information on developing a business case for digital preservation posted (November 2011)
Legislative Document Metadata Schema posted (November 2011)

Project Resources

General Project Information:

Initial Project Summary, 2007 (PDF)
Extension Request Summary, 2009 (PDF)
Partner Resources
Uniform Law Commission, Electronic Legal Materials Act (2012)
Summary of 2011 Project Work (2011)

Projects and Pilots:

California Digital Library; Merritt and Web Archiving Service
Sunlight Labs, OpenGovernment web page and OpenStates App
Syntactica, eXist - XML native database
Tessella, Safety Deposit Box

Created Resources Sorted Alphabetically:

Partner Meetings

The following links will retrieve a page documenting the meetings held with each state partner over the course of the project. These pages are updated after each meeting.