Web Documents Digital Archive Pilot Project (OCLC): Arizona

Janet Fisher

Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records

Phoenix, AZ

The State Library in Arizona has recently signed on to the OCLC Web
Preservation Project. The responsibility for this falls to another
person in my agency, our Director of Electronic Government Information.
I am here today to present some of his ideas and to describe our
thoughts and efforts to capture Arizona's electronic government
information for the future.

The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records is mandated to
preserve state agency materials, in all formats.

Currently, the agency has three responsibilities for state information.
We:

-   retain permanent copies of selected unpublished state government
    records in our Archives Division,

-   assist agencies in creating retention schedules and housing those
    retained files for the required time periods in our Records
    Management Division, and

-   obtain copies of state agency publications for long term retention
    in the Law and Research Library Division.

We are in a unique position to have all of these activities under the
leadership of one agency. The coordination of projects and any
difficulties dealing with overlaps between these programs is more easily
solved within one agency than it might be if we were in separate
agencies.

In the Law and Research Library Division, we have been working with
print publications for many years. With varying success, we have been
collecting, cataloging and providing access to these print publications.

For the past year, we have been piloting a Government Information
Locator System (GILS) program which spiders 105 state Web servers
(approximately 190,000 Web pages).

But we have been searching for a way to preserve the state agency Web
publications. We have looked at the work of the National Archives and at
the efforts of other states; and we have looked at the private sector.
We have come to this research project of OCLC to continue our growth and
to start working on a caching project for state information.

We do not want to save everything in Web space.

-   Given the challenges of preserving digital materials, we do not want
    to spend our resources saving electronic copies of information that
    is already being preserved in another, more stable, format (e.g.
    paper).

-   We do not want to save ephemeral material: the electronic equivalent
    of the "wet paint sign."

-   We are not interested in saving every view of the Web.

-   We are not interested in saving transactions performed on the Web --
    for example, renewing a driver's license -- because those
    transactions will be captured in another record series (the
    underlying database).

As an agency we want to preserve information that is accessible to the
public only on the Web, that provides evidence of what an agency
published and which may be used by the public in making a decision, and
demonstrates an agency's accountability.

Some of the problems that we are encountering are that:

-   Some permanently valuable publications are going on the Web without
    a paper copy being deposited at the Library.

-   The distinction between records and publications is blurring on the
    Web, so our need to retain both is good, but length of retention is
    different. For example, records have a specific period of retention
    time as defined by a retention schedule (perhaps 3 years, or longer,
    before destruction), where a publication may be kept for a much
    longer period of time.

-   Agencies need some way to demonstrate the state of information
    provided to the public via the Web in case of litigation (evidential
    value).

Throughout all of this, we must be able to meet out statutory
responsibility to preserve state agency publications. We can't rely on
agencies to preserve their Web publications; that's our mandate, not
theirs. We also have to recognize that agencies are not prepared to
provide reference service to their old Web sites, which may be stored
offline.

We have joined the OCLC Preservation Project to see how we can capture
and provide access to these publications. One thing we need to determine
is how much and how often we capture the information. Rather than trying
to capture every page, we are looking at a way to scan and capture (or
get a snapshot of) state information on state servers at specific
periods of time.

How would we describe the cache? What is the scope of the cache?

The cache should include only documents that meet the following five
criteria:

1.  Reside on a state server. Our primary list of servers to work from
    are those that are currently spidered by our GILS.

2.  The information has been created by or on behalf of a state agency
    as a product of that agency's mission. As a result, the state should
    have all rights to the content of those pages.

3.  We have considered giving precedence to Web pages that are roughly
    equivalent to printed publications. Such Web publications are
    typically more than a few pages and may be organized into chapters.
    They are not ephemeral; their value is measured in months rather
    than days or weeks.

4.  Web publications that are preserved in another format may be
    deselected. For example, Web versions of student/faculty directories
    may be excluded if a print version is preserved.

5.  The whole document should be preserved, including graphics and audio
    clips. Links to other pages in the cache should be modified so that
    they continue to point to a contemporaneous version of the linked
    page. Links to pages that fall outside the scope should be flagged
    as a link outside the cache that may no longer work and on which the
    information may have changed.

Ideally, all Web publications that meet the preceding criteria would be
cached. We are looking at capturing state Web materials four (4) times a
year, at a minimum. When we go into full production, we will investigate
monthly captures, and we will ask that agencies leave pages up for at
least a month to give us a chance to capture them.

One of the points in a methodology for Web space is to involve
Webmasters in the process and to stress the use of metatags. We have
already begun training of state Webmasters in metatagging for their
sites for successful searches using our Government Information Locator
System. In addition to helping point to current Web locations, the
metatags can be used as identifiers for these documents in the future
(and may include additional information to describe the electronic
information)

We have considered tags that would facilitate automated caching of those
pages for enduring access. Those tags we have considered include:

-   [Unique Identifier]{.underline} (a unique alphanumeric code, similar
    to ISBN or ISSN, to identify a document as a whole)

-   [Version Control Number]{.underline} (each revision of a document
    would receive a new Version Control Number, not a new Unique
    Identifier)

-   [Sequence Number]{.underline} (a number indicating the preferred
    order for linear presentation of a document.)

```{=html}
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-   For a print-like document, the sequence number is roughly equivalent
    to page numbers.

-   For hyperdocuments, the number may reflect a branch structure or
    some other organizing principle.

> The sequence number establishes the order in which pages should be
> printed or output to microfilm.

-   [Retention]{.underline} (indicates if the document should be cached
    through three possible values: ephemera, deselected, permanent)

How will we retrieve materials from the cache?

If the cache is stored on a Web server, the Government Information
Locator System can index and provide access to the contents of the
server in the same way it indexes and provides access to other Web
sites. We have also considered using a proxy server combined with a
database to ensure that links point to other documents contemporaneous
with the document being viewed, rather than the most current version.
For example, clicking on the Home button on an archived page would take
you to the Home page current when the archived page was served.

It is our hope that such a logical methodology will be viable and assist
us in the retention of Web-based state information, for the short term.
The puzzle of electronic information -- here today and gone tomorrow --
is one that needs to get solved. We need to be able to say it is here
today, and those materials of enduring value will also be here tomorrow.

These are the concepts we are carrying forward as we join in with others
to face the challenge of preservation of electronic documents.

An additional effort we are making in Arizona is to come to terms with
electronic records. We have convened a group of representatives from
state agencies and local governments, called the "Arizona 'Lectronic
Records Task Force" (ALERT) to look at public [records]{.underline},
[not]{.underline} [publications]{.underline}. This group is working on a
methodology and standards for handling electronic records. We are
starting with the need for a common vocabulary, and building discussions
about retention of electronic records.

The challenges brought with born digital information do not have one
answer, and so we are trying to address various angles and groups who
are involved in the creation and later referral to these information
sources.

We are looking at the Web caching possibilities of this OCLC Web
Preservation project as one of the pieces in the puzzle of preserving
state government information. We look forward to the experience we gain,
and lessons learned in this process.