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State Archives Agency Goes Digital with Exhibits

State turns to Google partnership to increase availability and preservation of archives.

The state of California has teamed up with Google to create digital archives of the state's records.

"California's first Legislature, meeting in 1849–50, charged the Secretary of State to receive '… all public records, registered maps, books, papers, rolls, documents and other writings ... which appertain to or are in any way connected with the political history and past administration of the government of California,'" the website for the project reads.

While the archives have been looking for new space for physical records, a digital collection has been growing. This month, the state published an exhibit on an architect who built many state buildings, making it the 12th online exhibit hosted on Google Arts & Culture.

"We have six floors of stacks," state Archivist Lisa Prince told Techwire in a phone interview. "We have millions and millions of documents, from even before the founding of the state."

Prince said the Google partnership was a way to make the information and photos more accessible to the public, allowing residents to see them from anywhere. 

"The secretary of state really wants to make records available," she said.

The Google system allows institutions to open a database where staff members can upload items, adding metadata like descriptions, dates and ID numbers.

There is no financing for the project outside of staff time used to input the 3,000 photos. Other records are digitized by staff of other agencies, which then share the records with the State Archives.

Kayla Nick-Kearney was a staff writer for Techwire from March 2017 through January 2019.