Tag Archives: digital preservation

Internet Archive Receives IMLS Grant to Expand Access to Local and State Government Information

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Internet Archive has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to support the development of ATLAS (Access To Local And State government information), a digital preservation program for state and local government agencies. 

Government information and documentation is an essential part of our shared public record. From local policies and public reports to records documenting the work of government agencies, these materials help communities understand their history and participate in public life. Yet access to this information can vary widely, and valuable digital records can be difficult to preserve, find, and use. 

Through this grant, the Internet Archive will develop ATLAS as a national program focused on supporting preservation efforts, institutional coordination, and access. Over the two-year project period, we will provide training and access to Internet Archive services Archive-It and Vault to 100 government and partner institutions, helping them strengthen their approaches to web archiving and digital preservation. 

This program will also include several new resources for the broader government information community. We will host a collaborative access portal to make government information easier to discover, develop a toolkit with practical resources for organizations working with these records, and host a National Summit on Local Government Information to bring together practitioners, researchers, and technologists interested in preserving and expanding access to the public record.  

Internet Archive will be working closely with the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) to engage with organizations across the country. CoSA is a nonprofit membership organization of the state and territorial government archives in the fifty states, five territories, and District of Columbia. 

Joy Banks, Executive Director of CoSA, shares “The Council of State Archivists is glad to partner with the Internet Archive on this important project. Government archives and records management programs have a responsibility to preserve and make accessible the records that document government. That work often now includes capture and preservation of websites and other digital assets. Through this collaboration, CoSA is glad to be a voice for the profession, building lines of support between state and local practitioners so that they can be better equipped for their essential work.” 

This grant represents an important opportunity to build connections among archives, libraries, government agencies, and communities of practice. We look forward to working with a variety of partners in each state and territory to make government information more accessible. 

Additional details about ATLAS and upcoming opportunities to participate will be shared soon. See our website to learn more or email us at atlasteam@archive.org with any questions.

Community Webs Receives $750,000 Grant to Expand Community Archiving by Public Libraries

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Started in 2017, our Community Webs program has over 175 public libraries and local cultural organizations working to build digital archives documenting the experiences of their communities, especially those patrons often underrepresented in traditional archives. Participating public libraries have created over 1,400 collections documenting local civic life totaling nearly 100 terabytes and tens of millions of individual documents, images, audio/video files, blogs, websites, social media, and more. You can browse many of these collections at the Community Webs website. Participants have also collaborated on digitization efforts to bring minority newspapers online, held public programming and outreach events, and formed local partnerships to help preservation efforts at other mission-aligned organizations. The program has conducted numerous workshops and national symposia to help public librarians gain expertise in digital preservation and cohort members have done dozens of presentations at professional conferences showcasing their work. In the past, Community Webs has received support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Mellon Foundation, the Kahle Austin Foundation, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

We are excited to announce that Community Webs has received $750,000 in funding from The Mellon Foundation to continue expanding the program. The award will allow additional public libraries to join the program and will enable new and existing members to continue their web archiving collection building using our Archive-It service. In addition, the funding will also provide members access to Internet Archive’s new Vault digital preservation service, enabling them to build and preserve collections of any type of digital materials. Lastly, leveraging members’ prior success in local partnerships, Community Webs will now include an “Affiliates” program so member public libraries can nominate local nonprofit partners that can also receive access to archiving services and resources. Funding will also support the continuation of the program’s professional development training in digital preservation and community archiving and its overall cohort and community building activities of workshops, events, and symposia.

We thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support of Community Webs. We are excited to continue to expand the program and empower hundreds of public librarians to build archives that document the voices, lives, and events of their communities and to ensure this material is permanently available to patrons, students, scholars, and citizens.