Archive for August 2016 (4 posts)

Nominations Sought for the U.S. Federal Government End of Term Web Archive

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Photos: TOP: January 21, 2013, Fifty-Seventh Inaugural Ceremonies, President Barack H. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Photo from U.S. Senate Photo Studio. BOTTOM: January 20, 2005, Fifty-Fifth Inaugural Ceremonies, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Photo from Architect of the Capitol.

TOP: January 21, 2013, Fifty-Seventh Inaugural Ceremonies, President Barack H. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.Photo from U.S. Senate Photo Studio.
BOTTOM: January 20, 2005, Fifty-Fifth Inaugural Ceremonies, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Photo from Architect of the Capitol.

This is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, lead information technology specialist of the Library of Congress Web Archiving Team

Readers of The Signal may recall prior efforts to archive United States Federal Government websites during the end of presidential terms. I last wrote about this in 2012 when we were working on preserving the government domain during the end of President Obama’s first term. To see the results of our 2008 and 2012 efforts, visit the End of Term Archive.

As the Obama administration comes to a close, the End of Term project team has formed again and we need help from you.

For the End of Term 2016 archive, the Library of Congress, California Digital Library, University of North Texas Libraries, Internet Archive, George Washington University Libraries, Stanford University Libraries and the U.S. Government Publishing Office have joined together for a collaborative project to preserve public United States Government websites at the end of the current presidential administration ending January 20, 2017. Partners are joining together to select, collect, preserve, and make the web archives available for research use.

This web harvest — like its predecessors in 2008 and 2012 — is intended to document the federal government’s presence on the web during the transition of Presidential administrations and to enhance the existing collections of the partner institutions. This broad comprehensive crawl of the .gov domain will include as many federal .gov sites as we can find, plus federal content in other domains (such as .mil, .com and social media content).

And that’s where you come in. You can help the project immensely by nominating your favorite .gov website, other federal government websites or governmental social media account with the End of Term Nomination Tool. Please nominate as many sites as you want. Nominate early and often. Tell your friends, family and colleagues to do the same. Help us preserve the .gov domain for posterity, public access and long-term preservation.

The Signal is Evolving

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When The Signal debuted in 2011, its focus was exclusively on the challenge of digital preservation, which is why its URL was //blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation. The Signal was a forum for news and information about digital preservation — unique problems and solutions, standards, collaborations and achievements. The Signal’s authors interviewed leaders in the field, profiled colleagues and […]

Congress.gov Nominated for Award

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FedScoop, the Washington DC government tech media company, announced that Congress.gov is one of their nominees for the 2016 FedScoop 50 awards. Features on Congress.gov (which In Custodia Legis has been posting about throughout its development) include: Ability to narrow and refine search results Ability to simultaneously search all content across all available years Bill […]

The NEH “Chronicling America” Challenge: Using Big Data to Ask Big Questions

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This is a guest post by Leah Weinryb Grohsgal of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Historic newspapers offer rich histories of American life, with glimpses into politics, sports, shopping, music, food, health, science, movies and everything in between.  The National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint effort between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the […]