Good News: ALIPAC to be entered into the Library of Congress archives

Friends of ALIPAC,

We have some good news and bad news to share.

THE BAD NEWS

The bad news is that our funds are currently too low for us to make it to 2015 without more help from our supporters due to the intense efforts we conducted during the historic elections of 2014 and the battle against Obama's Executive Action. We have also encountered unexpected extensive repairs needed on our main website. Over last weekend, www.alipac.us was severely damaged and we are working to repair it but the costs are going to be extensive. We are sorry to have to ask for help outside of our 3 funds drives each year, but if you can spare a donation to help us, please do at http://www.alipac.us/donations/.

THE GOOD NEWS

We were contacted by the Library of Congress a few weeks back when they notified us that they intended to copy portions of our website into their website archives. Each year, the Library of Congress (LOC) has included around 500 websites that they feel have influenced America's history and politics. Their goal since 2000 has been to have an archive of influential websites for researchers and future generations of Americans.

Their message said...

Quote:

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The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the Library's historic collection of Internet materials related to public policy topics. We consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record.

The Library of Congress preserves the Nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and the American people to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including websites.

The following URL has been selected:
alipac.us

...

Our web archives are important because they contribute to the historical record, capturing information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the web as an influential medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were "born digital" and never printed on paper.

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The LOC allows websites to opt out of this process, but I have decided to allow the archiving to proceed for the following reasons:

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/73...54525b7fff.jpg

First, many other great organizations that have been around a lot longer than we have are already on the LOC archives list and it is therefore a great honor for ALIPAC to join their ranks among groups like NumbersUSA, Judicial Watch, National Rifle Association, La Raza, and about every American state website and every federal campaign website! ALIPAC's entry into the Library of Congress will help new and potential supporters appreciate the extent and merits of our contributions to this struggle.

Second, while we are able to maintain the world's largest archive of information about the costly and deadly illegal alien invasion of America at quite some expense each month, we probably won't be able to do that forever. If the LOC archives our entire site, in future years their having a copy of our materials online would equate to more than $2,000 per month (in 2014 dollars) we spend in hosting costs, server costs, website repairs, etc.

Third, ALIPAC being a part of the Library of Congress means that one day our grandchildren and great-grandchildren can look back and read what we were really about in our own words and our own releases. The evil Soros groups are so eager to malign us all the time and if one day we have to close shop and go away, they intend their definition of us to be our lasting legacy. The Library of Congress archiving alipac.us means our actual statements will be around as long as the current American government continues. Our enemies over in the Soros backed smear groups will be very upset to learn ALIPAC is going into the history books of the Library of Congress.

Fourth, we intensely researched this issue regarding the Library's announced intentions to add us. We talked with our top activists and invited them to research the issue for two weeks. While many of us are very wary of government agencies because of the Executive Branch abuses of the IRS and Department of Homeland Security, we found no existing concerns anywhere about the Library of Congress being a problem.

Also, the LOC and our own technical professionals tell us that no private information such as email addresses or IP information will be accessible to the LOC and only the public parts of our site can be copied. We do not store any personal identification materials on our website at www.alipac.us.

The LOC assures us they will not try to hack into the site and anything password protected:

Quote:

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The Library does not archive password-protected content, unless by special permission from the site owner.

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The LOC cannot copy your private communications in our site nor any of your information in your account, they are only going to take an online snapshot of our publicly available content in the same way that Google, Yahoo, and Bing do with search engine programs or crawlers.

As all all of you are aware, ALIPAC has had one of the strictest privacy policies of any group in America (click to view) for the last ten years. We even list privacy protection in our platform page and have shown our supporters we value privacy in everything we do.

So while future generations of Americans will be able to read what some of our activists have chosen to say on our forums section or beneath our homepage articles, the only people who will know it is you are those you choose to tell your ALIPAC nickname to.

I plan to contact the families of some of our supporters who have passed away after making major contributions to our contents such as had_enuf, butterbean, and tinybobidaho to let them know their loved ones' opinions on these important matters will now be a part of the Library of Congress and their next of kin can share that info with loved ones if they like.

Our top activists scoured the web and found no documented problems with LOC website archiving and we have also spoken with several other organization leaders who confirmed with their staff they had no issues as well.

If you would like to learn more about the Library of Congress website archiving, please visit them at these links...

http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/

and

http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/faq.html


Also, if you have any further questions or concerns, my door is always open so send me an email or give me a call.

I am proud that our combined efforts fighting against illegal immigration and against amnesty for illegals will result in the more than 1,420,682 comments, articles, releases, and pages of content at www.alipac.us becoming an official part of the archives of the Library of Congress.

Many thanks to all of you who have helped get us to this point and to all of you who have made ALIPAC part of the top 500 influential websites in America. You can view their whole list of public policy sites we will be joining here (Click here).

We are happy to know that when ALIPAC.us puts out a new release on your behalf or when you decide to make a comment anonymously on our site, not only will many thousands of people see it on our site, but future generations of Americans will also have access to what we have to say.

Yours in our cause,


William Gheen
WilliamG@alipac.us
AMERICANS FOR LEGAL IMMIGRATION PAC
Post Office Box 30966, Raleigh, NC 27622-0966
Tel: (919) 787-6009 Toll Free: (866) 703-0864
FEC ID: C00405878




PS: It is important that we conduct our needed repairs as quickly as possible so the Library of Congress archives and the information that lawmakers, researchers, activists, and American citizens have come to rely on at www.alipac.us is fully available. Please help ALIPAC survive to fight again in 2015 by donating today at...
http://www.alipac.us/donations/

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Web Archiving FAQs

About the Library of Congress Web Archives

1. What is the Library of Congress Web Archive?
2. Why is the Library of Congress archiving websites?
3. What kinds of websites does the Library archive?
4. Are other organizations doing similar work?
5. Why is the Library archiving websites if others are doing it as well?
6. How can I contact the Library of Congress about its web archive?

How Web Archiving Works

1. How does the Library archive websites?
2. What is a web crawler?
3. How much of a website is collected in the archive?
4. Do you archive all identifying site documentation, including URL, trademark, copyright statement, ownership, publication date, etc.?
5. Is there any personal information in the web archive?

Information Especially for Webmasters and Site Owners

1. Why was my website selected?
2. How often and for how long will you collect my site?
3. What should I do if your crawler causes problems with my site?
4. My site has a password-protected area that requires a user ID and password. Will this protected content be archived?
5. I have a robots.txt exclusion on my website to block crawlers from certain parts of my site. How does this affect your collecting activity?
6. Do we need to contact you if our URL changes?
7. How do researchers access the archived websites?
8. What will people see when they access the archived site?
9. When will my archived site be available to researchers?
10. Will the archived page compete with my current site?
11. Will there be a link from your archive to my site as it currently exists?
12. What if I do not want my website to be available on the Library’s website? How do I opt out?
13. What are the copyright implications of the archiving of our site?
14. Will Library of Congress take over hosting of my site?
15. I would like to archive my website. Can you help me?

The Library of Congress Permissions Process

1. I was contacted via e-mail by the Library of Congress about archiving of my site. Is this a real request? Is it safe to click on the link?
2. What does it mean to grant or deny permission to allow the Library to display off-site?
3. I am having difficulty filling out your permission form.
4. Why have I received multiple permission requests from the Library of Congress?

About the Library of Congress Web Archives

1. What is the Library of Congress Web Archive?
   
   The Library of Congress Web Archive is a collection of archived websites grouped by theme, event, or subject area. Web archiving is the process of creating an archival copy of a website. An archived site is a snapshot of how the original site looked at a particular point in time. The Library’s goal is to document changes in a website over time. This means that most sites are archived more than once. The archive contains as much as possible from the original site, including text, images, audio, videos, and PDFs.
2. Why is the Library of Congress archiving websites?
   
   The Library of Congress is working with other libraries and archives from around the world to collect and preserve the web because an increasing amount of information can only be found in digital form on websites. A lot of cultural and scholarly information is created only in a digital format and not in a physical one. If it is not archived, it may be lost in the future.
   Creating a web archive also supports the goals of the Library’s Digital Strategic Plan. The Plan focuses on the collection and management of digital content and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program's (NDIIPP) strategic goal to manage and sustain at-risk digital content.
3. What kinds of websites does the Library archive?
   
   The Library archives websites that are selected by recommending officers, or curators, based on the theme or event being documented. The types of sites archived include, but are not limited to: United States government (federal, state, district, local), foreign government, candidates for political office, political commentary, political parties, media, religious organizations, support groups, tributes and memorials, advocacy groups, educational and research institutions, creative expressions (cartoons, poetry, etc.), and blogs. The Library maintains a collections policy statement and other internal documents to guide the selection of electronic resources, including websites.
   In 2010, the Library launched a program to archive sites not related to a particular theme or event. The sites are selected based on the subject expertise of recommending officers in three divisions: Humanities and Social Sciences; European Division; and Science, Business and Technology.
   For a list of all current and previous collections, visit our collections page. To view publicly available collections, visit the Library of Congress Web Archives.
4. Are other organizations doing similar work?
   
   Yes, there are a variety of other organizations that archive websites, including non-profits, the U.S. Government, libraries, and archives.
   The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that has archived billions of web pages since 1996. The Library of Congress contracts with the Internet Archive for many of its web archiving projects.
   A number of U.S. federal government agencies collect official web content, including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Government Printing Office (GPO).
   The Library of Congress also works closely with members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). The IIPC was formed in 2003 to collect of a rich body of Internet content from around the world and to foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards. The Library of Congress is a founding member of the IIPC. Other members include the national libraries of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the Internet Archive, and many others. Visit the IIPC Member Archivesportal to learn more about their programs.
5. Why is the Library archiving websites if others are doing it as well?
   
   Libraries and other organizations that archive the web have different collection strategies and collect different URLs at varying frequencies and depths. The Internet Archive is often thought to be archiving "the entire web" but in reality it is just a slice of what's available. It is important for libraries and archives to also select and create collections of web content. By working together, libraries, historical associations, archives, state governments, universities, and others focusing on specific collecting areas, can make sure that a larger amount digital content is archived and preserved for the future.
6. How do I contact the Library of Congress about its web archive?
   
   Use the online form to ask a question about web archiving activities or to send a message to the Library's Web Archiving Team.

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How Web Archiving Works

1. How does the Library archive websites?
   
   The Library or its agent makes a copy of a website using an open-source archival-quality web crawler called Heritrix . The Library uses other in-house tools to manage the selection and permissions process.
2. What is a web crawler?
   
   A web crawler is a software agent that traverses the web in an automated manner, making copies of the content it finds as it goes along. Web crawlers are used to create the index against which search engines search, or, in the context of archival crawling, to capture web content intended for longer-term preservation.
3. How much of a website is collected in the archive?
   
   The Library’s goal is to create an archival copy—essentially a snapshot—of how the site appeared at a particular point in time. Depending on the collection, the Library archives as much of the site as possible, including html pages, images, flash, PDFs, audio, and video files, to provide context for future researchers. The Heritrix crawler is currently unable to archive streaming media, "deep web" or database content requiring user input, and content requiring payment or a subscription for access. In addition, there will always be some websites that take advantage of emerging or unusual technologies that the crawler cannot anticipate.
4. Do you archive all identifying site documentation, including URL, trademark, copyright statement, ownership, publication date, etc.?
   
   The Library attempts to completely reproduce a site for archival purposes.
5. Is there any personal information in the web archive?
   
   The Library collects websites that are publicly accessible. These may include pages with personal information.

Top

Information Especially for Webmasters and Site Owners

1. Why was my website selected?
   
   Websites are selected by Library subject experts according to collection strategies developed for each thematic or event collection. The Library maintains a collections policy statement and other internal documents to guide the selection of electronic resources, including websites.
2. How often and for how long will you collect my site?
   
   Typically the Library crawls a website once a week or once monthly, depending on how frequently the content changes. Some sites are crawled more infrequently—just once or twice a year.
   The Library may crawl your site for a specific period of time or on an ongoing basis. This varies depending on the scope of a particular project. Some archiving activities are related to a time-sensitive event, such as before and immediately after a national election, or immediately following an event. Other archiving activities may be ongoing with no specified end date.
3. What should I do if your crawler causes problems with my site?
   
   The Library or its agent always tries to politely crawl sites in order to minimize server impact. Occasionally there may be problems. Please contact us immediately if you have problems or questions.
4. My site has a password-protected area that requires a user ID and password. Will this protected content be archived?
   
   The Library does not archive password-protected content, unless by special permission from the site owner.
5. I have a robots.txt exclusion on my website to block crawlers from certain parts of my site. How does this affect your collecting activity?
   
   The Library attempts to collect as much of the site as possible in order to create an accurate snapshot for future researchers. The Library notifies site owners before crawling which means we generally ignore robots.txt exclusions. Please contact us immediately if you have questions about this policy.
6. Do we need to contact you if our URL changes?
   
   We periodically monitor websites for changes that might affect the crawler, however, it is helpful if you notify us with any changes to the URL.
7. How do researchers access the archived websites?
   
   Eight of the Library's public Web Archives have recently been upgraded to a new presentation. Read more about the new features and using the archive in our announcement.
   Those and additional public web archives are also available on the Library of Congress Web Archives site. Users may also browse or search across all of the available archives. Please note that the archives sites themselves are not full-text indexed, only the records about the archived sites are searchable.
   If off-site access is not available, the record will state "Access restricted to on-site users at the Library of Congress."
8. What will people see when they access the archived site?
   
   Your archived site will appear much like it was on the day it was archived. The Library tries to capture the content as well as the look and feel. In our interface on www.loc.gov/lcwa, there will be abanner at the top of the page that alerts researchers that they are viewing an archived version. The date that the site was archived also appears in this banner. In our new presentation, the archived site will appear within a viewer that provides similar information. Researchers will be able to navigate the archived site much like the live web. Some items do not work in the archive, such as mailto links, forms, fields requiring input (e.g. search boxes), some multimedia, and some social networking sites.
9. When will my archived site be available to researchers?
   
   Web archive collections are made available as permissions, Library policies, and resources permit. The Library will generally apply a one-year embargo from the last crawl before the collection is made available to researchers. This is due to production and cataloging work that occurs for each archived site. For collection release announcements please subscribe to our RSS feed by clicking on the subscribe button on this page, or by visiting http://www.loc.gov/rss/ .
10. Will the archived page compete with my current site?
    
    This is generally not a problem due to the time it takes for the archive to be available to researchers. The public will need to visit your live website in order to retrieve current information. If you have concerns about public access to the archived version of your website, you may deny the Library permission to provide access to researchers off-site.
11. Will there be a link from your archive to my site as it currently exists?
    
    The catalog record will record the original URL—see the "URL at time of capture" field, but it will not be hyperlinked. Also, the original URL will also be listed on the page that displays all of the archiveddates.
12. What if I do not want my website to be available on the Library’s website? How do I opt out?
    
    If you are a copyright owner of or otherwise have exclusive control over materials presently in the archive, you can opt out of online access to your site by completing this form . Please consider that if you decide to allow the Library to provide online access to your archived website to researchers, the Library will not provide access until at least a year after the web archiving. Regardless of your decision with regard to online access, your site will still be available to scholars on the Library’s premises and by special arrangement. If you have the original email the Library sent you to notify you of the archive, please provide the tracking information in it to help the Library identify your URL in its collections.
13. What are the copyright implications of the archiving of our site?
    
    The copyright status of your site remains with you. We have a statement on each collection homepage about copyright.
14. Will Library of Congress take over hosting of my site?
    
    No. By archiving your site, the Library of Congress is preserving a snapshot of your site at a particular time. You are still responsible for hosting and maintaining your live website.
15. I would like to archive my website. Can you help me?
    
    At this time, the Library of Congress does not have a program to help individuals archive their personal websites. However, the Library's Digital Preservation website has information aboutpersonal archiving.

Top

The Library of Congress Permission Process

1. I was contacted via e-mail by the Library of Congress about archiving of my site. Is this a real request? Is it safe to click on the link?
   
   The Library notifies each site that we would like to include in the archive (with the exception of government websites), prior to archiving. In some cases, the e-mail asks permission to archive or to provide off-site access to researchers.
   The Library uses a permissions tool that allows easy contact with site owners via e-mail, and enables the site owners to respond to permissions requests using a web form. The responses are then recorded in a database.
   The e-mail you receive from the Library of Congress contains webcapture@loc.gov in the "from" address, and "Inclusion of your Website in the Library of Congress Web Archives" in the subject line. At the bottom of the e-mail message reads "For administrative purposes: URL and Record ID (a number)", which is the Library's internal tracking information.
   If you would like to confirm that the Library sent the permission e-mail, please contact us and a member of the Web Archiving Team will assist you.
2. What does it mean to grant or deny permission to allow the Library to display off-site?
   
   If you grant the Library permission to display your archived website off-site, it means the Library of Congress will provide public access to the archived copies of your website. If you deny off-site access, the Library may catalog and identify the site as part of a particular collection on our public website, but your archived site will only be available to researchers who visit the Library of Congress buildings in Washington, D.C. and by special arrangement
3. I am having difficulty filling out your permissions form.
   
   Please contact us if you have problems with the form, or reply to the e-mailed permission request and someone from the Library’s project team will assist you.
4. Why have I received multiple permission requests from the Library of Congress?
   
   In previous years, the Library was required to send permission notices to all selected websites in every collection it initiated, even if the site had previously granted or denied permission. Policies changed in 2006 and the Library can now request and apply blanket permission. This means that if a site owner granted permission after 2006, the Library can use that permission for future collections. This has minimized duplication in permission requests, however the Web Archiving Team occasionally contacts site owners for additional permissions if required.

Top

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http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/faq.html

It will be interesting to see what articles and/or comments they use.

If they use a bunch of old birther stuff we all come off looking like birthers.

They can pick serious news and we look serious.

Or they can pick a bunch of far out stuff from here and we look like a joke.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

It will be interesting to see what articles and/or comments they use.

If they use a bunch of old birther stuff we all come off looking like birthers.

They can pick serious news and we look serious.

Or they can pick a bunch of far out stuff from here and we look like a joke.

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Interesting point JD2, if you get a chance take a look at some of the many other websites on our side of this issue that have been archived and let me know if you find any evidence of the LOC cherry picking content that would be unflattering. And by unflattering, I mean clearly unflattering not just a matter of personal taste please.

I'll be glad to look at any evidence you can locate the LOC has done that to anyone before us.

And we can also review what they do afterwards and warn others if we encounter any problems.

W

Web Archive Collections

Researcher Access to Publicly Available Web Archive Collections is here.

The following is a list of all web archive collections developed by or in partnership with the Library of Congress. These are in various stages of production.
Active collections (i.e. currently collecting websites) are marked with a "★".

• U.S. Election Web Archives
• U.S. Congressional/Legislative Web Archives
• Law Library Web Archives
• Single Sites Web Archive

• Other Events and Themed Web Archives
• International Web Archives
• Collaborations

http://www.loc.gov/webarchiving/collections.html

Sample of NUMBERSUSA @ :

http://webarchive.loc.gov/lcwa0033/2...a.com/content/

Yes, I looked at several of the websites they have up. Most of them are on site access only meaning you have to be in the LOC to access most of what they archive. But I did not see any overt attempts to defame groups on our side by cherry picking content. Also, we let our top activists look into this for two weeks and nobody reported any evidence of that happening. I also heard back from NumbersUSA and several other groups on our side that were archived by LOC years ago and they report no adverse effects and no concerns whatsoever with their LOC archiving.

W

Is ALIPAC still participating in this?

Will the 2020 election be covered by this?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Is ALIPAC still participating in this?

Will the 2020 election be covered by this?

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We only needed to give our permission once for them to be able to archive the readily available parts of our site which are on display for the public.

Not sure how often or what parts of our site they archive. Not even sure if we are still on their radar after the hatchet job Silicon Valley has done on our site's visiblity.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ALIPAC

We only needed to give our permission once for them to be able to archive the readily available parts of our site which are on display for the public.

Not sure how often or what parts of our site they archive. Not even sure if we are still on their radar after the hatchet job Silicon Valley has done on our site's visiblity.

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If everyone (or someone) went back and added TAGS to every article all the way back to day one, like I did this article, it would help add visibility to the site.