Introduction to Web Archiving from the iSchool at UW-Madison
March 2021 to May 2021
So much of the archival record is digital and this expands beyond electronic documents to include coded web pages and embedded content. Preserving these interfaces is a distinct skill set, which archivists are cultivating. With support from a CLRC Development Award, I was able to complete a two-month course offered by the iSchool at UW-Madison. Introduction to Web Archiving was taught by Samantha Abrams, the Web Resources Collection Librarian for Ivy Plus Librarians and encompassed all the essential components of basic web archiving.
One of our first assignments was to draft a web archiving policy, specific to a project we identified at the start of the course. By the end of this exercise, I had illustrated how I intend my repository to begin a web archiving collection, how we would partner with web content creators to identify appropriate pages for preservation, and how these web materials would integrate with existing collections to provide a seamless experience for users of content that has migrated from paper to the web. Crucially, I was able to limit the scope of our web archiving efforts, making this undertaking feel more manageable for our department’s limited resources.
Most usefully, the course provided us with trial accounts for web archiving tools like Archive-It, Perma.CC, and Conifer. With guidance from our instructor, we ran test crawls of webpages and worked to trouble shoot issues with the captures. It was easy to identify different capabilities of each tool and to decide which might be more appropriate for certain content.
Throughout the course, I was able to learn from my classmates and our instructor through discussion boards. These discussions expanded my knowledge while also affirming that many of my own concerns and challenges are shared by others.
Web archiving is a natural expansion of the collection work archives have traditionally undertaken. Development of these 21st century skills was never more pressing than during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Efforts to document the University’s response to the virus, and roll in the development of testing, treatment, and prevention, were stymied by the staff’s unfamiliarity with web arching best practices. Through the Introduction to Web Archiving course, we gained the skills necessary to preserve the crucial web content that demonstrates Upstate’s contributions to the international fight against COVID-19.
Cara Howe
Assistant Director for Archives & Special Collections, Upstate Medical University
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