History

Columbia University will contribute email archiving solutions on both ends of the email stewardship cycle — acquisition and preservation, on one end, and research access, on the other. The focus will be on government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic that are being released through FOIA requests made available online by journalists. Consequently, researchers are facing a number of challenges accessing these records and cannot easily determine the scope of arrangement of the collections, or find descriptions of the contents of the main components.

n recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that computational techniques are deeply embedded in every stage of the American democratic process. Prominent examples include computational redistricting and the increased use of statistical analysis in polling and forecasts. This project will historicize the role of computers, as well as algorithmic thinking and mathematical rationales, in the constitution of American representative democracy in the twentieth century.