Washington Secretary of State - Digital Archives

Washington Secretary of State - Digital Archives

From SlashDot post:
"prostoalex writes "USA Today and dozens of others report that Washington state archives went online. Over the past two years project participants scanned 1 million documents issued by state and country authorities. The archive is located in my alma mater Eastern Washington University (go Eagles!) The 800 terabyte storage system was developed by Microsoft and EDS."

From the digitalarchives.wa.gov web site:
"The much-anticipated grand opening of America’s first state government digital archives occurred on October 4, 2004. The opening gala event hosted Washington State legislators, county officials, archivists from throughout the United States, as well as a delegation of regional archivists from as far away as China. Among the speakers at this prestigious event were Secretary of State Sam Reed and Lew Bellardo, Deputy Archivist of the United States"

Not sure how I feel about this.

On one side, it's very cool. Also interesting in the image format/viewer they selected (DjVu).

But on the other, there SURE is allot of information that's so easily accessible.

The historical records are cool and I don't see much of a problem having them open and online. But there are current records online too (here's a marriage cert from 1997 for example). I mean talk about fuel for identify theft or for social engineering!

I guess I'm more for "open is better" than not, but still...

(via Slashdot - Washington State Archives Go Digital)