About
Learn About the Archiving Program
The Web and Social Media Archiving Committee, copyright statement, and history of the tools used by the archives.
The North Carolina State Government Website and Social Media Archives are a service of the State Archives of North Carolina and the State Library of North Carolina and overseen by a committee of staff from both institutions. The program’s goals are:
- To create and maintain an archive of North Carolina state government agency websites and social media sites.
- To provide open access to the archives for the public and government agencies.
"Public records and public information compiled by the agencies of North Carolina government or its subdivisions are the property of the people" -- G.S. 132-1b.
The materials included in the North Carolina State Government Web Site Archives are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to the U.S. Copyright law. The user assumes full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Whenever materials are used in a publication or product an accompanying attribution statement should be included as follows: "Courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources."
Any materials included on a web site of a North Carolina government agency or its subdivision may be part of the archives, whether created by a North Carolina governmental entity or not. The original creators retain the copyright for materials in the archives that were not created by North Carolina governmental entities.
If you are a copyright holder who is not properly identified or who would prefer not to have your materials included in the archives, please contact us.
The North Carolina State Government Website Archives provide archiving, preservation, and access services for websites and social media content produced and maintained by North Carolina state agencies. Since 2005, the program has provided citizens of North Carolina with access to archived websites and online information published by their state government dating back to 1996.
This information includes, but is not limited to, the following types of content:
- Board and Commission meeting minutes;
- Publications that were only available on the web;
- Governmental policies;
- Historically significant photographs and videos;
- State-wide statistics;
- Social media sites.
In 2012, the program expanded to improve the ability to archive content from rapidly changing social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Prior information on the program, including legacy documentation, can be accessed through previously archived versions of this site. After social media platforms like Twitter/X and Facebook put measures in place require logins to access their content, the program was no longer able to crawl those sites. In 2024, the committee removed Twitter and Facebook accounts from the active seed list, although previously captured information is still available in the archives.
The State Archives and State Library of North Carolina have been collecting social media content using ArchiveSocial since 2012. This free and open archive provides access to hundreds of thousands of social media records from selected North Carolina state agencies. Social media activity from these agencies is continually being captured and indexed, and additional agencies will be included in the future. The content in this archive has been captured because it was made or received pursuant to law or ordinance in connection with the transaction of public business by an agency of North Carolina government or its subdivisions (G.S. § 132-1).
Although some social media accounts are archived through the website archives, the social media archives provide access to content like private messages. This content may not be publicly visible on social media platforms but is still considered a public record.