Project Description
In the Summer of 2024, the IGS Library (IGSL) kicked off its multi-year California Local Government Documents digitization (LoCAL Dig) project.
IGSL in collaboration with the California State Library (CSL), UCLA Young Research Library (UCLA), and in partnership with the Internet Archive (IA), has launched the LoCAL Dig Project, a groundbreaking effort funded by the State of California. This multi-year effort aims to digitize over 10,000 local government publications from cities, counties, and regional agencies across California, creating an unparalleled digital resource for understanding local governance, land use, and public policy trends over time.
As one of California's three designated state depository libraries for local government documents (per CA Gov Code § 50110), IGSL has been collecting these invaluable materials for over a century. Per the local depository statute, we have an obligation to preserve and make these materials available for reference and research use.
To meet this obligation,the LoCal Dig Project is both a large-scale print collection digitization effort as well as a digital collecting project. We will continue to collect and build a “born digital” collection of California local government documents in the coming years.
An important aspect of the project is enhancing our collections’ metadata (MARC records) and creating original catalog records for a large portion of the materials. This is a resource intensive part of the project but integral for successful discovery, access and use of the materials through archive.org, OCLC, UC Library Search, and open web searches.
Materials in scope for the project are local government publications from cities and counties as defined in CA Gov Code § 50001 - 50002. The three libraries were also depositories for regional governments, like the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), and Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG); these publications are included in the digitization project. The library collections also contain many U.S. federal and state government publications that focus on California local areas, however they are not currently in scope for this part of the project.
Project Goals & Impact
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Democratize access to California local government information via an accessible database for researchers and residents to better understand the history of local decisions, conduct and contribute their research and perspectives to local government, and improve their civic engagement, informed by historical context.
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Provide easy access to local government information as digital content and low-barrier opportunities to use computationally-assisted tools to analyze this content across California jurisdictions and over time.
- Improve government and governance through access to current and historical publications that will help policy makers make better informed decisions about the pressing issues impacting cities and counties in California. We hope that these materials will also aid in making changes to past policies that created systemic disadvantages to many local California communities of color and socioeconomically under-resourced communities.