This week we are going to explore the subject of what is a web archive, the reasons behind building these types of collections, and finally, what kinds of content you might expect in a web archive.
There are a couple of short videos to watch as well as some readings that present the concept of what a web archive is.
There is a graded discussion for this module.
- Understand why web archives exist
- Begin to interact with existing web archives
- Explore existing web archives and report out on what you discover.
- UK Web Archive. "What is a Web Archive?" (April 2, 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubDHY-ynWi0
- Potter, Abbey. “The Why and What of Web Archives.” The Signal: Digital Preservation (April 29, 2014) http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/04/the-why-and-what-of-web-archives/
- LePore, Jill. “The Cobweb: Can the Internet be archived?” The New Yorker (January 26, 2015) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb
- National Digital Stewardship Alliance. “Web Archiving in the United Sates: A 2017 Survey” 2017 https://osf.io/ht6ay/
- Skim this survey report.
- Bragg, Molly, Hanna, Kristine, et al. “The Web Archiving Life Cycle Model.” (March 2013) http://ait.blog.archive.org/files/2014/04/archiveit_life_cycle_model.pdf
- Introduction: pp. 1-5
- Vision and Objectives: pp. 5-8
- Lavoie, Brian. “The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model: Introductory Guide” (2nd Edition) DPC Technology Watch Report 14-02 (October 2014) http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/TWR14-02
- Section 5 and 6 (p 7-28)
Each week we will try and learn about a new web archive, a web archiving tool, or a web archiving service. The goal of this is to get an introduction to what is happening in the web archiving space, what is being collected, and who is collecting it.
This week we will start off with the largest web archive that we have, the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine.
We will learn more about the Internet Archive in future weeks. For now, type a url into the Wayback Machine and see what you can find. You could try https://unt.edu or maybe see what cnn.com looked like ten years ago. You can also try to view the different thumbnails that are rotating on the page. Explore some of the features of the interface after you have selected a URL to explore.
In at least one paragraph, discuss what you learned about web archiving in this week's introduction to the topic. Were you familiar with this area before this course? Have you ever found yourself using a web archive in your research or work? Knowing that there are web archives, how do you think they might be useful in your work in the future? Finally, if there was something that didn't get answered in the readings, or if a question came up that you would like to hear others ideas on, please include that in your post.
In at least one paragraph, discuss what you learned about the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. What URLs did you look at? Were you surprised by anything that you found? What is your previous experience with the Wayback Machine?
After you have made the discussion post described above, take the time to response, comment, or engage with at least two of your classmates posts.
If there are any unanswered questions feel free to try and offer an answer or suggestion to the original poster. Did they mention something that made you investigate something further? If so, what was it?