Petition Aims to Digitize U.S. History

The Center for American Progress think tank and the transparency group Public.Resources.Org want to turn the vast holdings of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Government Printing Office and other government agencies into the core of a national digital public library.

"We are not necessarily suggesting that the federal government immediately undertake an ambitious effort to scan [all government] holdings," CAP Chairman John Podesta and Public Resources President Carl Malamud wrote in an online petition titled "Yes we Scan." "We believe it would require a decade-long commitment to digitization to make our nation's cultural, scientific, educational, and historical resources available, but we can't even begin that discussion unless we know how big the problem is," they wrote. The authors suggest President Obama appoint a commission to investigate the government's full archival holdings and what it would take to bring it online.