City of Seattle Office of the City Clerk Open Government = Access Challenges and Opportunities

1. City of Seattle Office of the City Clerk Open Government = Access Challenges and Opportunities with Digital Records

2. Why do we keep records? Accountability to the Citizens of Seattle Institutional value: rights and obligations of the City Specific legal requirements Historical value: policy, culture, environment, infrastructure, personnel...

3. Ways of Seeing Preservation Looking back: Curation of historical records Looking forward: Documenting the present for the future

4. The Long Tail Concept new to the business world, not to Clerks and Archivists

5. The 80/20 Rule A traditional business model

6. The Long Tail

7. The Long Tail

8. The Long Tail

9. The Long Tail

10. Who Uses the Records We Keep? City Departments Private Citizens Neighborhood and community groups The Media Environmental researchers Students and Faculty Legal Firms and Title Companies Authors Labor Unions Businesses

11. And What are People Looking for? Engineering Records and Photographs Records of Elected Officials Utility records Legal records Parks records And more….

12. And more…

13. Opportunities with Digital Records Increased and enhanced access Open Data uses Sharing catalogs regionally/nationally Can help with preservation

14. Challenges with Digital Records • Volume of records • Management (indexing, description, creation/maintenance of databases and repositories, migration of formats) • Preservation (obsolete formats, deterioration) • Data integrity • Same or more work as with paper/analog: identification, description, preservation, access • Growing expectations for use and access

15. Planning for Change

16. A change model that won’t work

17. Planning for technological change • Anticipating format and software changes • Being poised to take advantage of innovations to improve access • Responding to changing user needs and expectations • Prioritizing work consistent with our mission, our long-term goals, and within our resources

18. How we ensure and increase access over time: Open Formats Online Databases and Exhibits Open Data Digitization of paper/analog records Digital Assets Preservation Team Capture of archival electronic records

19. How we ensure and increase access over time: Open Formats Open standards Sustainable data (software independent) Non-proprietary Widest accessibility, usable by PDA’s ADA compliant Easily migrated to other formats

20. How we ensure and increase access over time: Online Databases and Exhibits >650,000 database records online Links to >200,000 electronic documents Over 1,400,000 database hits in 2009 (excluding automatic crawlers/robots) Online Archives exhibits on popular topics ~260,000 hits to Archives Web exhibits in 2009

21. How we ensure and increase access over time: Open Data Share Archives Records with Library of Congress national union catalog Share Archives Records with Northwest Digital Archives Will be providing legislative data in XML format for City’s new Open Data site SMA Flickr site (>340,000 hits on photos and videos)

22. How we ensure and increase access over time: Digitization of paper/analog records Increasing access to high-use records Converting records that are in obsolete, proprietary, and/or deteriorating format Creating a digital copy as a security backup Ease of access (example: film, negatives, audio) Protecting analog original

23. How we ensure and increase access over time: Digitization of paper/analog records Film Video Audio Legislation Significant City publications Historical photographs (75,000 scanned negatives and prints online) Historical maps

24. Most popular film of 2009! Norway Day

25. “How will you Rate in ‘58 on the ‘Live Better Electrically’ Selling scale?”

26. Video

29. Still Images

32. How we ensure and increase access over time: Digital Assets Preservation Team Clerk, Archives, Records Management, and IT Identification, capture, management, preservation, disaster recovery, and access Adhering to professional guidelines and best practices (Library of Congress, San Diego Supercomputing Center, Cornell, etc.) Based on week-long Digital Preservation Training

33. How we ensure and increase access over time: Capture of electronic archival records Starting with Legislative Department records and select record series from other departments Importing records into a digital repository Searchable by staff for reference and Public Disclosure Using Photo Archives as model for ingest

34. DAPT Progress: • Set up Digital Repository Server “Legend,” 6 TB • Defined scope of records, structure • Migrated records • Policies for access, capturing checksums for files, backup • Using DRRS for backup in addition to incremental • Setting up second stand-alone server for access copies • Test use of Dspace for access

41. Technical goals: • Continue with digitization of select analog records for preservation and access • Retrospective scanning of legislation currently on fiche • Develop XML-based database system to replace legacy system • Expand scope of Digital Repository (WWW pages, database snapshots, open data sets, additional departments—ultimately Citywide) • Provide online access to records in Digital Repository

42. Policy goals (in the works!): • Social Media Policy for Elected Officials and their staff • Texting Policy for Legislative Department • Ongoing Email Management and other Electronic Records Management Training • Agreement with IT on policy for City Web sites to capture and convert for preservation • Agreement with Seattle Channel on accessioning video into SMA

43. City of Seattle Office of the City Clerk Open Government = Access to Records