Go Dominic and Wikimedians! Though obviously we are not so scalable.
What next?
Katie
Begin forwarded message:
From: The White House
<info(a)messages.whitehouse.gov>
Date: January 20, 2012 6:27:44 PM EST
To: filbertk(a)gmail.com
Subject: Petition Response: Digitizing Federal Public Records
Reply-To: The White House <info(a)messages.whitehouse.gov>
Digitizing Federal Public Records
By David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States
Thank you for signing a petition asking the Obama Administration to
digitize all public records.
The Obama Administration believes increasing access to our
collections by digitizing our records is a great idea. Our most
recent efforts to do this ourselves as part of our OpenGov
initiative, include the Citizen Archivist project, a Wikipedian in
Residence, Tag it Tuesdays, and Scanathons. We are also moving
forward on implementing the President’s recent Memorandum on Managin
g Government Records, which focuses on the need to update policies a
nd practices for the digital age.
But all those things aren’t enough. Your petition, and the Yes We Sc
an effort broadly, calls for a national strategy, and even a Federal
Scanning Commission, to figure out what it would take to digitize t
he holdings of many federal entities, from the Library of Congress t
o the Government Printing Office to the Smithsonian Institution.
These ideas bring up a host of questions that still need to be
answered: What should the National Archives’ priorities be? Do we fo
cus on preserving deteriorating paper records, still bound with red
ribbons from two centuries ago? Do we make digital copies of Vietnam
Era film footage? Should we focus on preserving those older paper r
ecords while citizens volunteer to digitize more recent, and better
preserved, records?
The National Archives – which houses the Nation’s permanent
records – is looking for your input to help answer these important q
uestions on how we move forward. What are your thoughts on how the N
ational Archives and other agencies should proceed? What questions s
hould we be asking ourselves?
You can add your thoughts over on the National Archives blog, and I’
m looking forward to having a longer discussion with the creators an
d signers of this petition on this important issue in the coming wee
ks– more details on that will follow.
Thank you again for your interest in this important issue. I’m looki
ng forward to your ideas on how we can proceed with digitizing feder
al public records.
Check out this response on We the People.
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