Electronic data dominates archives

Archivists responsible for putting together the presidential library of former US President George W. Bush are tasked with processing 80 terabytes of electronic information – 20 times the Clinton Administration’s four terabytes.

Mr Bush’s electronic archives contain more than 200 million e-mails, compared with about 20 million in former President Bill Clinton’s. Mr Bush’s archives also include share drives, hard drives, scheduling systems and digital photography, which his administration switched to about halfway through his tenure.

The Bush Administration’s e-mails alone would take up an estimated 600 million printed pages, said Alan Lowe, director of Mr Bush’s presidential library and museum.

Combined with 70 million paper documents, the haul far eclipses the 550 to 580 million printed pages Mr Lowe estimates are in all other National Archives’ presidential libraries.

“In the old days, the National Archives went in and packed up trucks and trucks full of paper,” Mr Lowe said. The preponderance of electronic files presents new challenges, ranging from dealing with the sheer volume to ensuring consistent redacting of information in an e-mail chain that may have been sent back and forth dozens of times.

Lockheed Martin has created the Electronic Records Archives system for the National Archives that is specifically designed to preserve the federal government’s digital records. Mr Lowe said the system was designed to ensure digital files will be accessible as computer programs evolve.

“It’s not dependent on any sort of operating system that we’re using right now,” he said.

Mr Bush archivists already have the ability to search the system and retrieve documents.

Now they must begin processing the data, reading through each document to decide what might need to be redacted for personal or national security reasons.

They’ll also put even more specific topic designators on each document to make them easier to find.