David All has a really compelling suggestion - the House or the Library of Congress should be preserving the content that its members and former members put on the web.

Former Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) is our nation’s longest serving Speaker. His legacy will be preserved in the history books (and wiki).But he was also the first Speaker to have a blog. And to some people, regardless of party affiliation, that matters.

Unfortunately, it appears that the only way we’ll ever be able to access his former website and blog is via the WayBack Machine, which is spotty at best.

The URL http://speaker.house.gov/ should house the current Speaker’s agenda, videos, and other pertinent information, but for the sake of history, I hope Speaker Pelosi starts a precedent by building a new page in to her site to help preserve the history of past Speakers (and their websites).

Doing so effectively could be as simple as tasking the Clerk of the House to author a biography of each Speaker which is posted in a “History� tab and then linking to the past website which would be maintained as a snapshot of history by the Office of the Clerk.

At some point, it will be helpful to have access to those pages and files.

After all, she has a few “firsts� of her own that I also think should and could be preserved better. For example, to the best of my knowledge, she’s the first Speaker to use video on her website. Whenever her term is up, people should be able to access those videos and her website as it was before she left.

This is a great point.  There’s so much information being lost every day, let alone when a Congressional change-over happens.  I don’t know how that could be done effectively, as websites change every day.

Ideas?  Or go over to David’s blog and comment.