SPRINGFIELD — Secretary of State and State Librarian Jesse White has announced that a new type of software has been developed through a grant awarded to the Illinois State Library that will make it easier to capture and preserve electronically published government documents.
"The state of Illinois is leading the way in ensuring that public sector documents do not disappear," said White. "This free software has been developed to allow all states to harvest, collect and maintain electronic documents from state government websites. Modern technology is allowing us to preserve these documents perpetually. These documents belong to the people, and they should be collected in a manner that allows the public to access them at any time in the future. Too often in the past these documents might have been thrown away. Now, they can be preserved for future educational, research, entertainment and other purposes."
White said the software is a product of the Preserving Electronic Publications (PEP) project. PEP was funded by an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant to the Illinois State Library, the State Library of Ohio, the Illinois State Archives and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional funding came from an IMLS Library Services and Technology Act grant awarded by the State Library to GSLIS. The PEP project homepage http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/library/isl/lat/pep/pep.html at the Illinois State Library may be accessed for more information on the project.
White said other state or local government agencies, libraries, and archives may use the software at no charge in activities related to digital information access and preservation. The software can be accessed at http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/pep/. The site includes a statement of the open-source license, the user's guide and other documentation.
PROGRAMS