Preserving the U.S. Constitution might be easier than preserving electronic records

by Lillie-Beth Brinkman Modified: January 8, 2013 at 5:00 pm •  Published: January 8, 2013

— In Washington, D.C., an estimated 1 million people stop by the National Archives Rotunda each year to see the country's hallowed, original founding documents — the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, grouped in an exhibit known as the “Charters of Freedom.”

These documents are faded and now displayed under dim lighting to prevent them from fading even more.

As records become more digital, however, it might be easier to preserve the physical form of these nearly 240-year-old documents than the much newer electronic ones generated by people — and the U.S. government — every day on their computers. Paper is stable; electronic records and the technology used to create them are not.

And while people are wrestling with organizing photos and other digital documents on their home computers on a gigabyte-sized scale (or a few terabytes at most), the National Archives and Records Administration is dealing with the same issues on a much more massive scale. An entire electronic records division, which formed in 1998 as a program and in 2005 as a separate electronics repository, has to address questions like these:

Which records should the government preserve for the history of the republic, and which ones are not important?

How can the government make sure that the records are readable or viewable 50, 100 or 200 years from now or longer, when current technology won't last that long? Will a jpeg format commonly used to view photos on a computer exist 50 years from now? What software will be able to open a Microsoft Word document?

Is every presidential email essential to save in a world where email exchanges are growing exponentially?

How does an agency decide what constitutes an official record worthy of sending to the archives?

The National Archives also receives electronic records from federal agencies to preserve as part of the nation's historical record.

Typically, agencies send them years after their creation. How can the Archives present these records so that existing or future technology can still access them?

“I have the same issues at home that I do here at work,” said David C. Lake, the base user liaison for the Electronics Records Archives program office. “I've got my family records ... lots of photographs of my kids. ... It's interesting listening to system administrators talk about backup strategies that I have (at home).”

The public vaults

Just off the rotunda where the “Charters of Freedom” are displayed are the National Archives and Records Administration's Public Vaults, a permanent, interactive exhibit that shows off some of the other documents that the Archives has deemed important to U.S. history and understanding.

Photographs, films, audio recordings, records searches, original letters and other documents are all on display so visitors can explore this country's story and understand the role of the National Archives and Records Administration in preserving it.

The Public Vaults, which opened in 2004, touches on records preservation and photo storage in people's own homes as it explains what the Archives tries to do for the entire government.

by Lillie-Beth Brinkman
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