Best way to store 'global variable' hash?

I would create a model that has the information and the create a CONSTANT in the model that loads the data. Then it will be loaded once in production into memory and yuo will have to do some magic when you are going to update the info... I did this for a model that was holding us states...

class State < ActiveRecord::Base   NAMES_ABBREVIATIONS = self.find(:all, :order => :name).map do |s|     [s.name, s.abbreviation]   end end