Washington State Opens Digital Records Archive

from the slowly,-slowly... dept

The idea of having all government archive records online makes perfect sense. No longer should people need to travel to a random building far, far away to see a simple record when they could just call it up on their internet connection. Of course, the reality is that it's pretty damn hard to digitize all those records in a useful manner. However, Washington State has done exactly that, and is now opening up access to their digital archives. It apparently took two years for volunteers to scan and transcribe each and every document, which really isn't that much time at all. Either way, it shows the struggle we face moving formerly analog information into a digital world.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    dorpus, 5 Oct 2004 @ 1:29am

    The age of Super-Government?

    The 1990s view of big government as evil rested on the premise that government is inherently mired in paperwork, therefore slow and inefficient. But if government can be super-fast, responsive, and cheap, could it give rise to a new era of command-and-control economies?

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.