Illinois State Library

CAPTURING E-PUBLICATIONS (CEP) OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the Illinois State Library (ISL) and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign (GSLIS-UIUC) a National Leadership Grant to provide critical leadership in the preservation of state online documents. The grant period runs from October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2005. The goal of this two-year National Leadership Grant project is to demonstrate a national model and provide the tools for online state document capture and preservation. The objectives are:

1. To deploy the Illinois software used in states across the nation;
2. To develop a version 2 of the PEP software to provide upgrades; and
3. To create access to state electronic documents through MARC records

Citizens are depending on state libraries and archives to fulfill their statutory role of preserving government information as a vital link in the public's right to know, a key principle supporting our democracy. In particular, the loss of online state government documents is of grave concern because of the difficulties in staying abreast of technological changes and the lack of concern for preservation on the part of information providers in state agencies.

While many states have built online access tools to current state Web-based information, none have completely met the challenges of capturing, preserving and providing public access to electronically published state online documents. Illinois has succeeded in developing software that captures a snapshot of the state's mark-up language Internet sites, detects changes and stores the information. In this way, the information from a state Web page can be displayed even though it has been removed from the agency server.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the Illinois State Library (ISL) and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign (GSLIS-UIUC) a National Leadership Grant to provide critical leadership in the preservation of state online documents. The CEP project represents a vehicle for capturing web-based public documents by providing the software and software installation. Distributing software at no cost to all the states is vital in the current economic climate, where states are particularly constrained by limited fiscal resources, staff, and expertise. Because valuable information is being lost daily at an exponential rate, CEP is essential in the preservation of online documents for all citizens and future generations.

The priorities are clear. First, the data must be saved to the extent possible in as many states as possible. Second, the capture must be made more complete. Third, the retrieval issues must be resolved.

Links:

• Preserving Electronic Publications -- Technical information and software downloads
• Participating State Libraries
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Illinois
• Montana
• North Carolina
• Utah
• Wisconsin

This project is partially funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Report on URLs Harvested
First Report
Second Report
Third Report
Fourth Report
Fifth Report
Final Report