The Library of Congress has a record of preserving important moments in American history as they play out on the Internet. The Library created an extensive September 11 Web Archive of important sites from around the world between September 11, 2001 and November 2001. It also collects the online history of such themes as presidential campaigns, international crises, and historic events, although some collections must be accessed on the LOC campus.

But this will be the most complex government web harvest to-date. The Web Archive will be between 10 and 12 terabytes, fully-searchable, and preserve each webpage's layout and design. Researchers will be able to look back at both the content and the presentation of the online message. This will be important to historians as they look back at gems such as LifeAndLiberty.gov.

The Library of Congress is somewhat unique among federal agencies, because it acknowledges the need for collaboration. It summarizes this philosophy, "The task of saving our digital heritage is too large for a single library or archive to do alone." But LOC then acts to create partnerships that lead to solutions. The partnership that the Library of Congress formed to realize this web archive of Bush administration websites includes:

• Internet Archive
  
• California Digital Library
  
• University of North Texas Libraries
  
• U.S. Government Printing Office
  

I look forward to seeing our collective history preserved through the good results of this partnership. The National Archives and Records Administration should take some pointers from its sister agency. With this project—as with NASA's recent web partnership—we see what can happen when collaboration-minded agencies work with innovative not-for-profit organizations.