Searching The Sarah Palin Emails

More than 24,199 pages of emails from the first 21 months of Sarah Palin’s term as Governor of Alaska were released today after an unsuccessful fight by the state to prevent their disclosure. About 30 news organizations paid to receive the 5 boxes of printed documents, and most are planning to scan the messages and put them in searchable online repositories as quickly as they can today.

The documents were first requested during the 2008 presidential campaign under freedom of information acts. More than 2,200 pages were withheld, due to Alaskan privacy laws and other client-attorney privileges. The state has also not finished reviewing her emails from late 2008 through the summer of 2009, when Palin resigned as governor.

The New York Times has a searchable repository of Palin emails that includes a timeline of notable events. MSN, in association with Mother Jones, ProPublica and Crivella West has another, as does the The Los Angeles Times.

As the emails were just released, none of these archives is yet complete, but the organizations expect the scanning process to be complete soon.