The purpose of this module is to explore some of the ways that web archives can be used to answer research questions. You will look at some examples of research that seek to answer questions about the field of web archives as well as the broader use of web archives to answer questions in different disciplines.
There are several readings, some online documentation to skim, a few videos to watch, and several power points that you will review.
- Familiarize yourself with different kinds of research that takes place with web archives.
- Learn ways of identifying how web archives are being used in research.
- Have experience identifying research that utilizes web archives.
The readings this week were selected to give you an introduction to different kinds of research that is being done with web archives. You will also look at how different web archives are working to enable access to researchers and different strategies that are in place for working with web archives in research projects.
This week's subject could easily fill a whole semester as we look at the kinds of research conducted with web archives and how web archives are working to facilitate research with web archives. I've tried to pick some examples of each and then provided a number of websites for different initiatives in this space.
- Ben-David, A. (2019). Web Archives as Memoryware: Critical reflections on sources and methods for web history. International Internet Preservation Consortium's Web Archiving Conference 2019, Zagreb, Croatia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kRC2X88kF4
- While a bit on the longer side, I thought this was one of the most interesting talks I've heard in a long time. The volume is low at the beginning but it gets better after a few minutes when the microphone is moved.
- Brügger, N. (2009). Website history and the website as an object of study. New Media & Society, 11(1–2), 115–132. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444808099574
- UNT Libraries direct link - https://journals-sagepub-com.libproxy.library.unt.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444808099574
- Milligan, I. (2016). Lost in the Infinite Archive: The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Archives. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10(1) 78-94. https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2016.0161
- University of Waterloo's Institutional Repository Preprint - https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/10322
- Webster, P. (2021). Digital archaeology in the web of links: Reconstructing a late-1990's web sphere. In D. Gomes, E. Demidova, J. Winters, & T. Risse (Eds.), The Past Web (155-164). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_12
- UNT Libraries direct link - https://link-springer-com.libproxy.library.unt.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_12.pdf
- Ben-David, A. (2021). Critical web archive research. In D. Gomes, E. Demidova, J. Winters, & T. Risse (Eds.), The Past Web (181-188). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_14
- UNT Libraries direct link - https://link-springer-com.libproxy.library.unt.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_14.pdf
- Zierau, E., & Moldrup-Dalum, P. (2021). Making web collections for research sustainable & reusable: Possibilities and challenges Experienced. International Internet Preservation Consortium's Web Archiving Conference 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DGsyEylnM4
- Ruest, N., Lin, J., Milligan, I., & Fritz, S. (2020). The Archives Unleashed Project: Technology, Process, and Community to Improve Scholarly Access to Web Archives. Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. https://doi.org/10.1145/3383583.3398513
- Also available as preprint from arXiv - https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.05399
- Lin, J., Milligan, I. Wiebe, J., & Zhou, A. (2017). Warcbase: Scalable Analytics Infrastructure for Exploring Web Archives. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. 10(4). 1-30 https://doi.org/10.1145/3097570
- UNT Libraries Direct Link to resource - https://dl-acm-org.libproxy.library.unt.edu/doi/10.1145/3097570
- Archive-It Research Services - https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/209671666-Introduction-to-Archive-It-Research-Services-ARS-
- Web Archive Transformation (WAT) files - https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/360039686611
- Web Archive Named Entities (WANE) files - https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/360039691351
- Longitudinal Graph Analysis (LGA) files - https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/360039291992
- RESAW, a Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials - http://resaw.eu/
- Web Archiving and Digital Libraries - https://fox.cs.vt.edu/wadl2022.html
- Archives Unleashed - https://archivesunleashed.org/
- WARCnet - https://cc.au.dk/en/warcnet/
- WARCnet Papers - https://cc.au.dk/en/warcnet/warcnet-papers/
Web Archiving Exercise - Research with Web Archives. This week we are going to explore different research projects that make use of web archives to answer research questions.
I like to think about work with web archives as falling into a few different types. First, there is work that is exploring the nature of web archives themselves. These are often analysis of the shape, size, or contents of the web archive. They can also include research about how the web archive was crawled or the relationships of content in the websites. This can happen with network analysis or by working with other derivative formats from the web archive itself.
Another type of research makes use of web archives as a dataset of large amounts of text to build tools, models, and services for research. You will have seen this in some of the Common Crawl (https://commoncrawl.org) research that you looked at in a previous module.
Finally in there is research that is conducted with web archives as a datasource to answer questions in the specific discipline such as political science, history, or health policy. This list of potential uses is almost endless.
This week's exercise is to identify two example papers or articles from two of these three rough categories. Said another way, don't choose the same category twice, and identify two papers.
- Web archives to study web archives.
- Web archives for building models.
- Web archives for answering disciplinary research questions.
In this week's discussion, include a citation for the paper or articles that you identified along with a paragraph describing the research and how the web archive was used to facilitate that research. Information about specifics of the web archive such as domain, size, time periods, or formats would be great to include.
Where to find these papers?
I suggest doing some broad searches in Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/ as a way to being this assignment.
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 look at the output of the International Internet Preservation Consortium's (IIPC) General Assembly and Web Archiving Conference.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/IIPCM/
This collection of presentations is hosted by the UNT Digital Library and includes 316 presentation from eight years of events hosted by the IIPC.
You can view the items in this collection at this link.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/IIPCM/browse/
Take some time to explore these presentations to get a better sense of the kinds of presentations and work that is being carried out by members of the IIPC as well as others in this web archives space.
In this week's discussion you will identify one presentation and write a description of the work being described in the presentation. Make sure that you link to the presentation so that others can see what you are referencing.
In at least one paragraph, discuss what you learned this week about research being conducted with web archives. What were some of the concepts that were new to you this week? Did you have any thoughts about the different kinds of research that can be done with web archives? In this week's exercise, three broad areas were suggested for a way of classifying research conducted with web archives. How do you think those three categories hold up? Too broad? Too narrow? Need additional ones based on what you found? Share your thoughts with the class.
In at least one paragraph each, discuss the two articles or papers that you identified in this weeks web archiving exercise. In addition to a citation for the paper or articles that you identified, describe the research and how the web archive was used to facilitate that research. Information about specifics of the web archive such as domain, size, time periods, or formats would be great to include.
Finally, in at least one paragraph, identify which presentation you found in the IIPC's GA and WAC collection in the UNT Digital Library. Who was involved in the work? What was the scope of the work or project? What questions would you like to ask the presenters about their work if you had a chance.
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?