Crisostimo’s online campaign tool, crisostimo4uscongress.com was mentioned by the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. as a “Web site of interest related to election 2008,” and was selected for inclusion in the historic collections of Internet materials related to this year’s polls.
The Library of Congress, or its agent, will engage in the collection of content from Crisostimo’s Web site at regular intervals and will make this collection available to researchers at the library facilities.
Most of the CNMI congressional delegate candidates have their own Web sites.
The Library of Congress’ Web Capture team informed Crisostimo in an e-mail that they will include his Web site in their future collections related to national elections.
The Library of Congress’ traditional functions include acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the U.S. Congress and to the American people.
Crisostimo, an incumbent senator, told Variety that the e-mail from the Library of Congress is great news for the CNMI.
“The U.S. Library of Congress was impressed with my Web site and I thank in great part my hard working committee who stood behind me 100 percent,” he said.
Crisostimo was also the only CNMI delegate candidate who spent time campaigning for Democratic nominee and now President-elect Barack Obama.
Crisostimo campaigned for Obama in Phoenix, Arizona last month.
After a few days there, he returned to the CNMI to resume campaigning for his own candidacy.
He said he left behind his “footsteps in memory of this historic election of the CNMI for the world to see.”
The Library of Congress wants to make its collection available to offsite researchers.
“The library hopes that you share its vision of preserving Web materials about Election 2008 and future elections, and permitting researchers from across the world to access them,” the Library of Congress told Crisostimo.
The Library of Congress has collected Web sites with certain themes or topics for several years.
Its Election Web archives contribute to the historical record of national elections, capturing information that could otherwise be lost.
With the growing role of the Web as an influential medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were “born digital” and never printed on paper, the Library stated.
The Library has developed three Election Web Archives for the 2000, 2002 and 2004 polls. These are available along with other Web Archive collections through the library’s Web site http://www.loc.gov/webcapture.
