The LiveScience web site has an interesting article about the problems archivists face in the digital age and one possible solution. "With the proliferation of digital records, the task of the archivist has grown more complex. This problem is especially acute for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government agency responsible for managing and preserving the nation's historical records. At the end of President George W. Bush's administration in 2000, NARA received roughly thirty-five times the amount of data as previously received from the administration of President Clinton, which itself was many times that of the previous administration. With the federal government increasingly using social media, cloud computing, and other technologies to contribute to open government, this trend is not likely to decline. By 2014, NARA is expecting to accumulate more than 35 petabytes (quadrillions of bytes) of data in the form of electronic records. "
The article then goes on to describe one solution created by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), a National Science Foundation-funded center for advanced computing research. You can read the article at http://www.livescience.com/13406-glimpse-archives-future-bts-110325.html
