On April 15, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) posted a statement about its decision to discontinue capturing “snapshots” of federal agency Web sites. Here is an excerpt:
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a memorandum to agency records officers on March 27, 2008, stating that NARA would not conduct an end of administration web snapshot or harvest of Executive Branch websites nor require agencies to do so. This memorandum did not apply to Presidential records or to records of the Congress.
On the site, NARA makes a distinction between Web snapshots and federal agency records on the Web and NARA gives links to their guidelines to agencies for managing Web records. They make the point that: “While a snapshot may provide some indication of “look and feel” of a particular department’s or agency’s web presence on one particular day…the web snapshot does not systematically or completely document agency actions or functions in a meaningful way.” This is due to lack of depth in the snapshot, lack of access to actual data, and inconsistency of Web site information.
Some of the questions the original NARA memorandum brings up are: What percentage of federal resources and planning time is going into preserving agency reports? What criteria is used for creating and preserving digital reports and data versus criteria used for tangible items? What percentage of federal agency materials are digital only? I am sure there are other questions that need asking. Please post any questions and thoughts about the matter–I’d love to hear comments and see more resources on this issue.
For a look at the entire statement and reasoning behind the decision, see National Archives and Records Management Web Harvesting Background on NARA’s Web site: http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/memos/nwm13-2008-brief.html.
