The paper that I prepared under contract for the Center for Research Libraries is now available:
- Born-Digital U.S. Federal Government Information: Preservation and Access, March 2014. Prepared by James A. Jacobs for “Leviathan, the Center for Research Libraries Global Resources Collections Forum.” [link updated]
This is one of several background readings recommended by CRL for attendees of the CRL Forum Leviathan: Libraries and Government Information in the Era of Big Data, which is part of the CRL Council of Voting Members Meeting and Collections Forum, which will be held in Chicago on Apr 24 2014 – Apr 25 2014.
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Thanks for posting this Jim. It’s a solid review of the field of digital government information and will help inform the discussion at the CRL spring forum. Especially critical is the chart on page 4 which shows just how big the digital preservation challenge is compared to paper preservation. It strengthens my POV that digitization of historic documents are taking too much of FDLP libraries’ energy and focus when the real elephant in the FDLP room is born-digital govt information. Yes, of course libraries must put effort toward cataloging their historic collections, but we also need to have a concerted and collective effort toward collecting and preserving born-digital documents. If we don’t do it, nobody will.