Storing Decades of Bureaucratic Data

[ Thanks to Paul Shread for this link. ]

"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is in the process of sorting through millions of historically significant records created by the Federal government and its bureaus and agencies over the last thirty or more years, figuring out how to properly preserve these electronic and paper records in perpetuity while (eventually) making them available to the public.

"Described as "the archive of the future," NARA's 10-year-old Electronic Records Archives (ERA) project is still a work in progress, which NARA hopes to complete in 2011. The goal of the project is "to enable researchers 50 or 100 years from now to find and retrieve electronic records using the best technology available to them, regardless of what hardware or software was used to create them," and to "make it easier for citizens to discover what records the government has and to access them," according to a statement issued by NARA."

Complete Story

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