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:
Thousands of CRS reports stored and served by University of North Texas Library
The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries has accepted the challenge of locally stored digital materials in part by keeping an archive of 8,000 reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). These reports currently take up 12GB of a 250GB hard drive. At the average CRS document size, UNT has room for more than 152,000 more CRS reports. UNT has used a modified form of the free, open source Keystone Digital Library system to allow their collection to be searchable and browseable from their CRS home page at http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/. Most of the funds for the original setup of the CRS archive came from a 2002 NewsBank/Readex/GODORT/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Research Grant Award of $2,000. Considerable staff time was spend on the Keystone software and there is ongoing staff time used in identifying, capturing, scanning, and assigning subjects to the reports. Many of the same things that would be required for tangible reports. Continue reading
Los Alamos Technical Reports and Publications
"In 2002, the Los Alamos National Laboratory terminated public access to thousands of unclassified reports on nuclear science and technology as well as other historical and policy-related publications that had formerly been available on the Lab's web site as part of its Library Without Walls initiative." Continue reading
Kentucky State Library locally stores and serves state e-docs
As I write this on December 10, 2005, Federal Depository Libraries across the country have 21 days to complete the federally required biennial library survey. For the first time ever, this survey contains a question on digital deposit. Some librarians are worried about the committment needed to maintain local digital collections. So that's why I've been writing up examples of libraries that have taken up the digital challenge. Today's example is the Kentucky State Library and Archives Agency. The Kentucky State Library stores roughly 6000 files representing 4500-5000 documents. The files take up 5.34GB and have been mostly harvested in the past two years. Kentucky currently has 100GB of free storage space with an option on another terabyte (1000GB). At the average Kentucky e-doc file size of 1MB, Kentucky could store another 102,400 files or more than 85,000 documents. Continue reading
Happy 20th birthday National Security Archive!
National Security Archive 20th Anniversary: Celebrating 20 Years of Keeping Government Honest The National Security Archive celebrates its 20th anniversary today with a special event at George Washington University, headlined by Bill Moyers, with Seymour M. Hersh, Tina Rosenberg, Scott Armstrong, Geneva Overholser, Walter B. Slocombe, Morton H. Halperin and Sherry Jones. You can listen to Bill Moyers' keynote address as well as the panels with the other speakers. Moyers once again does an amazing job! If you haven't heard him talk (and even if you have!!), you're in for a real treat. Continue reading