Web Archiving Roundup: October 23, 2018

Yes, we’re back! (you’re welcome)

It’s been a while since our last roundup so we thought it would be a good idea to do a quick recap. The SAA Web Archiving Section recently held elections for the Steering Committee for vice chair, secretary, education coordinator, communications manager, and student member. The newly appointed members are:

Emily Ward, Digital Archivist, East Baton Rouge Parish Library
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect

Julia Corrin, University Archivist, Carnegie Mellon University
Education Coordinator

Kelsey O’Connell, Digital Archivist, Northwestern University
Secretary

Elisa Landaverde, Metadata Librarian, Michigan State University
Communications Manager

Louise LoBello, Archives Student, Rutgers University
Student Member

We are currently working on updating our microsite so stay tuned for our new look.

And now for our October roundup, here are some web archiving highlights:

• Sunlight Foundation announces The Web Integrity Project Volunteer Position: Website Monitoring Analyst
• Policy Matters. ACA@UBC 11th Annual Seminar and Symposium, 14-15 Feb. 2019 https://slais.ubc.ca/events/event/policy-matters-acaubc-11th-annual-seminar-and-symposium/
• Librarians, Archivists & Technology: A Survey of Tools Used
• Archive-It announcement: Cobweb Call for Participation and Metadata
• National Library of Medicine update on the Opioid Epidemic web archive
• University of Birmingham geographical research using archived websites

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Web Archiving Roundup: July 2, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for July 2, 2018:

• In Web Archives for the Analog Archivist, Aleksandr Gelfand writes: ‘By incorporating the use of Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine into their workflows, archivists working primarily with analog records may enhance their ability in such tasks as the construction of a processing plan, the creation of more accurate historical descriptions for finding aids, and potentially may be able to provide better reference services to their patrons.’
• The British Library looks at its preservation plans for emerging formats, including archived websites.
• In Wales, MirrorWeb will work with the Welsh Government ‘to digitally archive the Welsh nation’s online presence.’
• In the next few weeks, Cobweb will begin conducting user testing of its functional prototype to learn from potential users about what they’d consider most useful in a collaborative collection development platform.
• A look at Memento Tracer: High Fidelity Web Archiving at Scale.

Web Archiving Roundup: May 29, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for May 29, 2018:

• Read an interview with Jane Winters, Professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, who discusses using web archives as primary sources in her research.
• Watch Kate Bowers, Jessica Venlet, and Deborah Kempe, discuss approaches to describing web archives.
• Catch up with the International Internet Preservation Consortium’s Content Development Group, and read about their plans for the rest of 2018.
• Did you know that WordPress turns fifteen this year? Listen to Jay Hoffman discuss its context within the larger history of the web.
• And: Small Data Industries gives us a study on the Curation, Acquisition, and Preservation of Animated GIFs.

Web Archiving Roundup: May 7, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup: May 7, 2018

• On Archive-It.org, Diana Bowers-Smith — at the Brooklyn Public Library — writes about ‘Saving Local News on the Web,’ and Archive-It’s Community Webs program.
• This week, at the Yale Center for British Art, John Bell and Jon Ippolito ask whether art can be permanent in the digital age.
• The Society of American Archivists’ Records Management Section reminds us that URLs Aren’t Archives.
• A look at Archiving the 1 October Web over at The Public Historian.
• And, at Wired: What Happens When Science Just Disappears?

Web Archiving Roundup: April 16, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for April 16, 2018:

• On NiemanLab, read about how the New York Times is trying to preserve millions of old pages the way they were originally published. (Archived link.)
  
• Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed has developed two new videos about the ins and outs of web archiving (in Dutch, of course, but featuring English subtitles). (Archived link.)
• The International Internet Preservation Consortium has an update on the Web Curator Tool. (Archived link.)
• And the California Digital Library has an update on Cobweb, which supports the distributed work of nominating websites for inclusion in web archive collections by allowing project organizers to establish, describe, and manage thematic collecting projects. (Archived link.)
• From the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Adventures in Conserving Old Tech. (Archived link.)

Web Archiving Roundup: April 2, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for April 2, 2018:

• In If These Crawls Could Talk, Emily Maemura, Nicholas Worby, Ian Milligan, and Christoph Becker propose a ‘framework for documenting key dimensions of a collection that addresses the situated nature of the organizational context, technical specificities, and unique characteristics of web materials that are the focus of a collection.’
• Why is it Important to Preserve Old Software? Steve Goldstein and Euan Cochrane tackle the question.
• Fourteen years of Archiving the Croatian Web.
• At Ethics and Archiving the Web, Ian Milligan looks at the Ethics of Studying GeoCities.
• Time to update your links: Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service.

Web Archiving Roundup: March 19, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for March 19, 2018:

• Read about the Accidental Web Archive at Virginia Tech: Roger Christman reflects upon what went into creating the Library of Virginia’s ‘Tragedy at Virginia Tech,’ Archive-It collection. (Archived link.)
• Listen to Nicki Saylor and Trevor Owens talk about preserving online web cultures. (Archived link.)
• In partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloane Foundation, Yale has plans to ‘recover more than 3,000 obsolete computer programs so that they can be accessed with modern technology.’ (Archived link.)
• In Ireland, the Web Archiving & Preservation Task Force has reconvened. (Archived link.)
• Don’t forget: iPres is accepting contributions for its September conference. This year’s theme — Where art and science meet: the art in science and the science in art. Papers, posters, demonstrations, workshops, tutorials, and panels are due on April 15. Other contributions — digital preservation games, original graphics, and lightning talks — are due in May.
• And, both the Digital Library Federation Forum and Digital Preservation 2018 are accepting proposals. Proposals for both conferences are due on May 7, 2018.

Web Archiving Roundup: March 5, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for March 5, 2018:

• Read up on the Web Integrity Project — an initiative of the Sunlight Foundation, dedicated to monitoring changes to government websites and ‘holding our government accountable by revealing shifts in public information and access to Web resources, as well as changes in stated policies and priorities.’ (Archived link.)
• When Good Links Go Bad: Link Rot in Ebooks: as Teresa Elsey writes, ‘As the web continually changes and reorganizes itself, the URLs included in ebooks eventually become outdated and stop working.” One solution for ebook developers? “… When their links rot, … point to an archive of the page rather than the page itself.” (Archived link.)
• A new report on the scholarly use of web archives from Maria-Dorina Costea and NetLab. (Archived link.)
• Read about how the Harvard National Security Journal uses the Perma.cc API. (Archived link.)
• You now have until March 12 to submit your papers to Web Archiving Histories and Futures, to be held in Wellinton, New Zealand from November 13-15.

Web Archiving Roundup: February 19, 2018

Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for February 19, 2018:

• Archives Unleashed at the British Library: working with web archive data from the International Internet Preservation Consortium’s ‘National Olympic and Paralympic Committees‘ collection, a group of researchers asked: ‘What is the gender distribution of National Olympic Committees?’ (Archived link.)
• The Really Old Website Resurrector: faced with defunct copies of departmental websites stored on CDs and DVDs, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Archives tested their ability to temporarily host the websites again using Archive-It and what’s now called the Really Old Website Resurrector. Code for the Resurrector is up on GitHub.
• Link Rot for Lawyers: a blog post in which Perma.cc asks: ‘Is link rot a problem for law firms?‘ Hint: yes. In fact, after reviewing court filings made in the last five years by three of the largest law firms in the United States, Perma.cc found that ‘over 80% had at least one broken link’ and that, ‘on average, these briefs contained around six broken links each, and one brief contained seventeen broken links.’ (Archived link.)
• Erasing history: from the Columbia Journalism Review — ‘When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.’ (Archived link.)
• Watch Improving the Robustness of the Arquivo.pt Web Archive, which ‘provides an overview of the architecture and functioning of the system that supports the Arquivo.pt web archive.’
• Ethics & Archiving the Web‘s full conference schedule is out, and tickets are now available for purchase. Ethics & Archiving the Web will be held March 22-24 at the New Museum in New York. (And for those who cannot attend: conference sessions and some workshop sessions will be livestreamed.)
• You still have time to submit proposals to Web Archiving Histories and Futures, to be held November 13-15 in Wellington, New Zealand. Proposals are due February 28, and may cover: building web archives, maintaining web archive content and operations, using and researching web archives, and / or web archive histories and futures.

Web Archiving Roundup: February 5, 2018

Happy February, Roundtablers! Here’s your Web Archiving Roundup for February 5, 2018:

• Archiving the alternative presses threatened by wealthy buyers: in partnership with Archive-It, Freedom of the Press Foundation is launching an online archives collection, focused ‘on news outlets we deem to be especially vulnerable to the billionaire problem,’ and ‘aims to preserve sites in their entirety before their archives can be taken down or manipulated.’ (Archived link.)
• A New Playback Tool for the UK Web Archive: the UK Web Archive will be working with Rhizome to build a version of pyweb (Python Wayback) that they ‘hope will greatly improve the quality of playback for access to our archived content.’ (Archived link.)
• And, speaking of: Webrecorder has released an updated version of pyweb, ‘a major refactoring and improvement’ of the ‘core engine’ that powers Webrecorder. (Archived link.)
• The International Internet Preservation Consortium Content Development Group would like your help to archive websites from around the world related to the 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games! Submit seeds via this Google Form.