The digital information that the U.S. federal government publishes is not being adequately preserved. Current preservation practices are built on a paper-era infrastructure that does not work in the digital age. In this textbook, the authors examine how preservation practices of the past affect digital preservation, analyze publishing and preservation data to characterize the current gaps in preservation, and look to the future by charting a path to a successful distributed digital preservation infrastructure for government information.

The book addresses technical issues without unnecessarily technical jargon. It is designed to be used by LIS students, front-line librarians and archivists, managers of libraries and archives, government workers who publish and preserve government information, and policy makers who design laws and regulations that affect the production, dissemination and preservation of government information.