Rick Perry’s digital legacy gives Texas archivists new momentum

Preservica User Jelain Chubb talks to The Texas Tribune about providing public access to Governor Rick Perry's digital legacy.

"In February 2014, state archivist Jelain Chubb got the news she’d been waiting for: Gov. Rick Perry would be delivering all of the records from his unprecedentedly long tenure to the State Library and Archives Commission.

But there was a problem. While the governor’s 4,000 cubic feet of paper could be sorted, itemized, boxed and shelved alongside other state records dating back centuries, Chubb and her staff had no system in place to store thousands of gigabytes of photos, emails and audio and video recordings, much less make them available to the public. The Perry collection presented a Texas-sized challenge for a commission that had no capacity to manage the “born-digital” records — those with no paper or analog footprint.

More than two years later, Chubb and her staff have turned the Perry problem into a solution. In January, they launched the Texas Digital Archive, a portal where the public can view Perry’s archives and much more: digitized versions of physical archive materials spanning Texas’ history. The digital archive also gives the commission the tools to warehouse future electronic records — the emails, photographs and multimedia that will help future researchers document Texas' modern history." Read the full article here...