BATON ROUGE, La. – Every day across state government, employees create countless public documents. Not everything deserves to be saved, but there are many documents that need to be preserved and made accessible to the public.

For three-quarters of a century, that task has fallen to the Recorder of Documents and the Louisiana Public Document Depository Program (LPDDP) in the State Library of Louisiana. The program`s 75th anniversary was celebrated Tuesday, November 7, 2023, during a ceremony at the State Library. It`s an inconspicuous office but one that is an important part of preserving our state`s history.

"Access to public documents is essential to a functioning democracy. Laws that dictate how public documents are saved exist for a reason," said Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser, whose office oversees the State Library of Louisiana. "The number of state agencies in Louisiana is large, and they produce a dizzying number of documents. It`s easy for them to get lost. That`s why it`s important to make sure one agency collects and preserves the most important ones. It`s the only way we can have a complete, organized historical record of state government."

The recorder`s office was founded when information collection and distribution was far different than it is now.

"There is so much information that`s accessible these days with the click of a mouse, but not everything winds up on Google, and it`s easy for items to get lost on the web or deleted from office servers over time," said State Librarian Meg Placke. "The Louisiana Public Document Depository Program has quietly but dutifully done its job of providing access to state publications and preserving our history for three-quarters of a century now, and every resident of the state is better off for that work."

A Trailblazing Effort

The LPDDP was established by state law in 1948 and was one of the first depository programs in the country. The time when the program began was one when formalized record keeping was in its infancy. The National Archives was established only a few years earlier.

Margaret T. Lane served as the first Recorder of Documents from the LPDDP`s founding until her retirement in 1975. Her work likely was not easy at the start, if a newspaper report about the office is any indication.

"Before the office was established, libraries had to contact each agency themselves, and more often than not, their lists were incomplete because of... the time-consuming and often futile effort," read a story in The Morning Advocate from 1960.

But things changed over time, and the collection rapidly grew as agencies learned about their new responsibility to file documents to the Recorder of Documents. Today, there are several thousand documents on file. Some of the oldest documents are the Acts of the Legislature and the Annual Financial and Statistical Report from the Department of Education, both of which date to the 1800s.

Staying True To The Mission

A part of the Secretary of State`s Office until 1977, the Recorder of Documents` office in Baton Rouge has always been the central collection point and distribution center, sending materials to 32 depository libraries across the state, which maintain documents in print or digital formats, depending on how the documents are received from agencies. Documents are also sent to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

An initial goal of the LPDDP was that no Louisianan should be more than an hour`s drive from a depository library. That remains the case today.

"The LPDDP has always aimed to achieve the twin goals of access and preservation," said Eric Cartier, Recorder of Documents since 2018. "We have a legal responsibility to collect public documents and make them available to the public, while also preserving them for the long term, so that people today, tomorrow, and in the future can learn how the state of Louisiana operates."

Public documents that are distributed and preserved are those that are produced by a state agency for publication, including annual reports, quarterly newsletters, pamphlets, meeting minutes, technical reports, and more. Proclamations and executive orders from the governor are also saved by the Recorder of Documents.

These days, the two-person recorder`s office processes 1,776 print and digital documents on average every year. While pixels have overtaken paper, Lane`s decades-old views about the LPDDP are as salient today as ever.

"Public documents help provide a valuable and complete source of information... on every phase of life and governmental activity in the state," she wrote. "They keep the citizens of our state informed as to the progress of projects and current activities in the state."

"Like Lane, I understand that whether a document is a flimsy newsletter, a slick annual report, or a PDF, a document is a document, and the Recorder of Documents Office in the LPDDP has a legal obligation to collect it, catalog it, and make it available to the public," Cartier said. "The mission remains the same 75 years on."