Via dotgovwatch, it looks like the National Archives is discontinuing their Web Harvest program:

For the first time since the Internet began, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will not record a snapshot of Executive Branch websites at the end of a Presidential administration.

In the article, Coby Logen notes that the valuable work of non-profits like archive.org shouldn't entirely supplant the work of the government. Federal agencies exist to protect the public interest, through a public mechanism. Our national government has a responsibility to protect and document its history. They are uniquely positioned to do so; no one else has both the reliable public mandate and the public accountability necessary for protecting historical documents.

Federal Web sites are historical documents, and NARA's Web Harvest program should be enthusiastically supported. Digital records management should enable easier and cheaper preservation, and brings the promise of more meaningful disclosure and access to both current and historical documents.

The fact that digital preservation is done by others outside NARA isn't an excuse for NARA to abdicate their responsibility, but an argument that they should be capable of fulfilling it.

As Members of Congress and Federal Agencies increasingly move their work online, robust digital archiving will only become more important, so we can understand how our government is performing its duties.

I've been on a mission, since November 14th, to find a digital copy of S.Pub 102-20, a reference document from 1990 giving a very comprehensive analysis of all public congressional information, from an archival perspective. I've finally managed to digitize a copy (after some quality time at the scanner). It is a large file. (Click here to download a PDF.)

The preface describes it as a "study of the archival sources that document the operations of Congress." The "archival sources" described in this document comprise the entire body of public congressional information, the substance of both administrative minutiae, and legislative substance. Just as we are interested in the capacity of the public to be conscious of its legislature, we should be interested in the legislature's capacity to take stock of itself, to engage in constructive introspection. (more)

I'm glad to have just found the archive of old Web sites from members of Congress, maintained by the Center for Legislative Archives under the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). (more after the jump.)

I found this post from the Library of Congress blog yesterday, and it has me thinking about a bunch of other things I've been intending to write about.

Via the Library of Congress blog, it looks like the LOC Website will be getting an upgrade in the coming weeks. They make a good point about choosing between providing RSS feeds and email updates, noting that many more people use email than RSS:

While only a fraction of people on the Web use RSS feeds, something like 100 percent of them use email, and this is just another part of our efforts to get information to people in the way that is most useful to them. You can get a sense for how the email updates will function by looking at the FBI’s Web site.

Happily, they’re not choosing between the two, and have a pretty broad set of RSS feeds already on offer on their RSS page.