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ArcticStones's avatar

The END OF TERM WEB ARCHIVE

Elections have many consequences. Here is another albeit lesser-known one:

. "Citizens Race To Save Government Websites From Vanishing"

"In a small, windowless room in San Francisco, rows of computers whir with an intensity that borders on a scream. This may be an ordinary scene for a data center located less than an hour’s drive from Silicon Valley, but these machines are engaged in an extraordinary task.

"…they’re harvesting vast amounts of government data before the White House welcomes new residents or former ones in January. The information will live on in the *End of Term Web Archive*, a giant repository of federal government websites preserved for the historical record as one administrative term ends and a new one begins. Librarians, archivists and technologists across the country join forces every four years to donate time, effort and resources to what they dub the end-of-term crawl, with the resulting datasets available to the public for free."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2024/10/23/inside-the-race-to-capture-government-websites-before-they-vanish-forever/

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benamery21's avatar

Very important. Sad that it has to be a private effort, it should be unquestionable that such government records be officially preserved.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Yup. This time around it is particularly important, as we are facing an incoming president keen on rewriting history, and who has a penchant for twisting people’s perception of reality itself.

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