The Chesapeake Project, a two-year pilot project begun in early 2007, has been completed and the final evaluation report has been released. This was a collaborative project initiated by the Georgetown Law Library and the State Law Libraries of Maryland and Virginia. The goal of the Chesapeake Project was to explore the preservation of "born-digital legal information published directly to the Web."
As noted in their final report:
"The Chesapeake Project has proven to be a success. More than 4,300 digital items, representing nearly 1,900 titles, have been harvested from the Web and archived, and roughly 14 percent of these titles have already been removed from their original locations on the Web, demonstrating the importance and effectiveness of the project’s efforts. Moreover, the project’s access figures demonstrate both the broad, international reach of the project’s efforts, as well as the successful selection of high interest and high-use materials by project participants." [emphasis added]
One of the other notable accomplishments is the development of an organizational structure that can be used as a model to develop similar digital preservation projects. It is also hoped that the findings will be of interest to the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) and will inspire "a nationwide preservation program for legal resources."