Come Visit the Washington State Digital Archives Exhibit

We at the Washington State Digital Archives are packing up our gear and getting ready to set up our exhibit in Portland.We hope that everyone will stop by and see us.

We are the first built-from-the-ground-up digital archives in the world and we have a staggering 85 million records archived. Our collections include historic photographs, the Frontier Justice collection of territorial-era court documents (bonus sample: this 1887 case of a Nez Perce Indian accused of horse theft), property record cards (hey look, Barack Obama's Seattle home!), census and naturalization records, and so much more.

The Washington State Digital Archives is also a pioneer in developing new ways for our citizens to access the records of their government online. One exciting feature is audio search--keyword searching that currently allows users to search across more than 10,000 hours and 30 years of the House of Representatives Committee Meeting Recordings. Microsoft was an important partner in bringing this technology to the Digital Archives, and ours is the only website where users can perform this kind of audio search. Let us show you how it works!

So come on by and see Assistant Digital Archivist Larry Cebula and Lead Archivist Debbie Bahn to talk about what we are calling the "Washington State Model" for digital archiving, or just to chat about technology and public history. And if someone would bring us a cup of coffee that would be great.