Independence Public Records Archive

The archive was built because serious civic research should not become impossible when a government website changes vendors, a legacy link disappears or older records are pushed behind a request process. Leigh worked through the practical problems of preserving nearly two decades of Independence meeting material: source discovery, agenda and attachment collection, R2 storage, deduplication, oversized-PDF recovery, indexing, cross-checking object counts against source-system records and creating a usable public-facing search tool.

The project required repeated troubleshooting rather than a one-click scrape. Large agenda packets had to be recovered and handled separately; source records were audited against what had actually landed in storage; duplicate processing had to be avoided; and the public interface had to make documents, attachments and historical context easier to find. The work also created an independent preservation layer so citizens are not entirely dependent on whichever public interface the City happens to use at a given moment.

The archive is completed and operating publicly at https://tiny.cc/indeparchive. Maintenance and additions can continue, but the core project is no longer 'in progress.' It is a functioning public resource and evidence of hands-on records research, information organization, transparency work and follow-through.