Washington State Digital Archives Partnership Kicks Off
March 18-19, 2008 -- Washington and the eight other states working with it to preserve state and local government information met in Cheney, Wash., to kick off their Library of Congress-sponsored project.
Stuart McKee, Microsoft national technology officer, set the tone for the meeting with words of encouragement that also served as a challenge: "Never underestimate the ability of a few people to change the world. That is what I see all of you doing with this project." Microsoft is also supporting the project.
Participants gather in the meeting room at the Washington State Digital Archives.
The Multistate Preservation Consortium Utilizing the Washington State Digital Archives Framework is one of four multistate projects supported by the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. This inaugural meeting for the project, which is concentrating on the preservation of state and local government digital information, brought archivists, librarians and technologists together to explore a collaborative network for preservation built on the success of the Washington State Digital Archives.
Attendees from partner states Washington, Idaho, Louisiana, Indiana, Alaska, Montana, Oregon California and Colorado met to begin developing something that currently does not exist: a shared digital repository for state government digital information.
F. Gerald Handfield Jr., Washington state archivist, outlined the work ahead and also unveiled a surprise: a digital archives Web page for each of several partner states. The pages already enable the searching of more than 1 million death records and will serve as the starting point for states to add additional categories of information.
Handfield and his team from the Washington State Digital Archives outlined plans for working with each state to identify and transfer digital information to the facility. The project will ensure long-term access to important governmental digital resources.
The Digital Archives, on the campus of Eastern Washington University, is a leader among states in digital archiving. The multistate project intends to build on this success and to demonstrate the value of collaboration among states for leveraging limited resources for digital preservation.
Attendees were eager to get started with the work, and commitments were made to identify digital content, develop shared technical capabilities and make information available. The meeting closed with Handfield and EWU President Rodolfo Arévalo distributing lapel pins proclaiming "Start Something Big." While serving as the EWU slogan, there was consensus that the phrase was apt for this project as well.
For more information on the multistate digital preservation projects, read the news release.
