Washington State Library stores and serves state e-docs

Over the past two weeks, I have been profiling libraries that have been taking up the challenge of storing and serving electronic government documents to their users. My intention is to show that this can be done without breaking their institution’s bank.

Today I offer the last profile in this current series, the Washington State Library.

The Washington State Library (WSL) currently stores 1,500 state documents taking up 1.57GB of storage space. Using an existing computer in the library, they have 321GB of storage space left. At the current average document size, the Washington State Library could store more than 300,000 additional documents. WSL believes that time spent processing digital documents is similar to what they have to spend on print and has a similar workflow.

Source: Personal Communication, Judy Pitchford, December 16, 2005

This profile is the last of five. The other four were:

• UNT stores and serves CRS Reports
• Kentucky State Library stores and serves state publications
• Alaska State Library stores and serves state publications
• Minnesota Legislative Reference Library stores and serves state publications

There are more examples, but I think these five give a fair estimate of the capabilities and work needed of libraries to acquire, store and serve digital government documents that are willing to do so.

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