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Digital Government Information Initiatives
Current Projects
Persistent Digital Archives and Library System (PeDALS)
The Arizona State Library is building the capabilities to store and provide access to digital information in all forms, including public records and reports created by state and local governments, as well as personal papers, photographs, and other historical records. The materials may be born digital or may be digitized.
Website Archives
The Arizona State Agency Website Archives Collection is composed of websites created by the state agencies of Arizona’s government. The websites are collected on a bi-monthly basis using an automated web crawler operated by the Internet Archive's Archive-it service. This fully searchable collection contains website content from 2007 to present.
The Arizona Centennial Archives Collection includes websites about Centennial events, projects and celebrations. The websites were collected using an automated web crawler operated by the Internet Archive's Archive-it service.
State Publications Collection in Arizona Memory Project
Digitized publications produced by and for Arizona state agencies are available from this online collection, which is updated on a continuing basis. Also included are a few reports that were not published for or by a state agency. These were received from the Legislature for inclusion in the collection.
Past Projects
Arizona Electronic Recordkeeping System (ERS) Guidelines
The ERS Guidelines describe specifications for recordkeeping functionality that should be incorporated into any electronic recordkeeping system to ensure the records are accepted as evidence, well managed, and preserved, and that benefits are appropriate to the costs. These specifications are organized into three broad sections.
- Specific functional requirements, including requirements for system administration, origin/creation of records, security and trustworthiness, access, maintenance and preservation, and disposal.
- General requirements for recordkeeping, including trustworthiness, records management, legal requirements, business requirements, security requirements, administrative considerations, and human factors.
- Background to help designers balance the compliance with the requirements with resources and value of the records.
Arizona Electronic Records Thesaurus
The original thesaurus grew out of a practical need to ensure that different disciplines working together to address problems of electronic records could understand each other. The definitions of key terms are dependent on the context in which those terms are used. 'Record' means one thing to a database program, another to an archivist. The legal definition of 'public record' is broader than the vernacular understanding. The original thesaurus has been superseded by A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Society of American Archivists, August 2005). The new glossary was developed with support from the Arizona State Library and Archives and from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
An Arizona Model for Web Preservation and Access
The Library and Archives is developing a new model for curating a collection of Web documents. The model considers how the basic processes of identification and selection, acquisition, description, reference, and preservation will change in the digital era. It also explores how the fundamental principles underlying those activities must be reconsidered. The model is based on the observation that the organization of Web sites parallels the organization of an archival collection and on the assumption that archival principles of provenance and original order are useful to curate and to provide access to documents in the collection. The model is described in the white paper published in DttP: Documents to the People 33:1 (Spring 2005). Library and Archives staff have been asked to speak about the Arizona Model at the State GILS Conference, the Western Round-Up Archives Conference, the Library of Congress, and the American Library Association, and the model is an important component of the ECHO DEPository Research Project (described below).
Model Assurance Statement for Electronic Recordkeeping Systems
The Library and Archives is developing a program to review agencies' electronic recordkeeping systems to ensure that archival records in those systems are maintained in a trustworthy manner and that they can be transferred to the Archives for permanent preservation. Agencies that wish to keep archival records in an electronic recordkeeping system will enter into an agreement with the Library and Archives that assure they will follow a prescribed methodology to maintain and transfer the records.
New Skills for a Digital Era
A joint project of the Arizona State Library and Archives, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Society of American Archivists, this colloquium brought together librarians, archivists, and records managers with significant experience working with digital information to discuss the practical knowledge these professionals will need to thrive in the digital era. Proceedings will be published in late 2006.
Web Archives Workbench
In collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and OCLC, the Arizona State Library developed a set of software tools to identify, select, acquire, describe, provide access to, and preserve state agency web publications. This project was part of the ECHO DEPository research project funded by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and administered by the National Science Foundation. Much of this work was based on the Arizona Model. For more information and code, please see http://webarchivwkbnch.sourceforge.net/
The Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving Our Nation's Political Cultural Heritage
In collaboration with the California Digital Library, the Arizona State Library is developing a set of tools for use by libraries to capture, curate, and preserve collections of web-based government and political information, including state agency publications and campaign literature. This project is funded by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and administered by the National Science Foundation.
Papers and Presentations
Society of American Archivists, 2009
Richard Pearce Moses presented Orphan Works: Statement of Best Practices.
New Mexico Digital Initiatives Conference, June 2008
Richard Pearce-Moses presented the keynote Flatland to Virtual: Transcendence and the Digital Dimension.
Access to Archives: Japanese Experiences, American Experiences, Japan, May 2007
Richard Pearce-Moses presented Caught in the Middle: Access to State Government Records in the United States. Published in Chiyoko Ogawa and Izumi Koide, アーカイブへのアクセス : 日本の経験, アメリカの経験 (Nichigai Asoshiētsu, 2008).
Joint Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, and the Council of State Archivists in Washington, DC, August 2006
4 August 2006. Janus in Cyberspace: Archives on the Threshold of the Digital Era.
Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, New Orleans, August 2005
Winds of Change: Blown to Bits. Presented by Richard Pearce-Moses at the closing plenary of the Society of American Archivists 69th Annual Meeting.
Society of Southwest Archivists, May 2005
Richard Pearce-Moses was invited to give the keynote at this association of professional archivists. The paper, "A Bridge to the Future: Committing Intentional Acts of Memory, considers how the archival and records professions must transform itself to survive in the digital era.
Library of Congress, May 2005
Richard Pearce-Moses was invited to make a presentation about the Arizona Model to Library of Congress staff.
Pearce-Moses, Richard.
An Arizona Model for Preservation and Access of Web Documents. Dttp: Documents to the People, Spring 2005.
Persistence of Memory: Stewardship of Digital Assets, December 2006
Richard Pearce-Moses presented What is a Digital Asset?
National Historical Publications and Records Commission Fellows Symposium
Richard Pearce-Moses was invited to present early results of investigations into the analysis of state agency websites. This research led to the development of the Arizona Model. Richard Pearce-Moses is a past NHPRC Fellow and a member of the current Fellows Advisory Board.
Arizona 'Lectronic Records Taskforce (ALERT), May 2003
Presentations by Carolyn Purcell, CIO for the State of Texas, and by Charles Dollar, author of Authentic electronic records: Strategies for long-term access.
Arizona Convocation 2002
Author David Levy of the University of Washington Information School was the keynote speaker. Levy addressed the future of documents in the digital era and the role of documents in cultural memory.
Arizona 'Lectronic Records Taskforce (ALERT) October 2001
Managing E-Records: A Practical Approach, a PowerPoint presentation with extensive presentation notes. It's easy to become overwhelmed by the many challenges of managing electronic records. Because e-records management is so new, there are no clear solutions. However, many of those challenges are irrelevant to specific series. By focusing on a specific series, you take practical action to ensure that the series is well managed.
What Are You Talking About: The Challenges of Jargon, a PowerPoint presentation with extensive presentation notes. Archivists, records managers, and information technologists often use the same term with different meanings (homographs). The resulting confusion complicates cooperation between these groups that is necessary to developing successful electronic records management. The presentation describes the thesaurus project and covers a few key terms.
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