by Pam Greenberg
If your legislature uses Twitter, those Tweets, along with every other public tweet since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will now be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. But will other digital legislative materials in your state be preserved for access in the future?
The Minnesota Historical Society’s (MHS) Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information Project is working on ways to preserve and provide enhanced online access to legislative materials in digital form.
This multi-year project, funded through the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), is working to implement a trustworthy information management system and is testing the capacity of different states to adopt and adapt the system for their own use. The project is exploring ways states can preserve and provide better long-term digital access to bills, committee reports, floor proceedings and other legislative materials.
Explore the MHS site for more information or listen to their podcast featuring Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and Robert Horton, Minnesota Historical Society’s Director of Library, Publications and Collections, speaking about the importance of creating a digital trail for today’s electronic legislatures. NCSL also has resources available about preservation of digital legislative records.