[ 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.”