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Posted on March 13, 2023 in Blog Posts
As time moves on, we conduct more and more of our daily lives online. Work, education, communication with friends and family, news, and images are presented and shared through a variety of websites. Many resources that were previously published and distributed on paper are now only available online, like course catalogs, promotional materials, reports, and large data sets. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, even more of our interactions have moved to the web. As is the case with any digital material, web content is more vulnerable to loss than analog media.
According to a Scientific American report, the average lifespan of a webpage in 1997 was just 44 days; in 2003, the average lifespan increased to 100 days. As of 2021, the lifespan of a website is 2 years and 7 months. Estimating the lifespan of a website depends on many factors, but these numbers pose a concern. With the ability to easily edit or remove information completely from a website, how can this information be preserved? This is where web archiving comes into play.
Web archiving is “the process of collecting, preserving, and providing enduring access to web content,” according to the official definition from the Society of American Archivists. It allows for the recording of the entire contents of a web page and its images, providing interaction with links. Web archives differ from screenshots, which are static and can only provide an image reminder of what a web page looked like. Screenshots are also easily editable and manipulable, unlike web archives.
People can archive websites in a variety of ways, such as the Save Page Now feature on the Wayback Machine website, a free account on Conifer, or a paid subscription service like Archive-It.
While each of these tools have their benefits, the choice of tool depends on the types of collections you would like to archive, your budget, and how you would like users to access them.
It is especially important to capture at-risk materials, such as government and social justice websites and social media. Web archiving can be a cross-departmental collaboration involving technical services, special collections, reference, and instruction. Working together, librarians can help preserve the web, while also teaching people about the significance of what is posted online.
Librarians and archivists should pursue web archiving as a form of collection development and preservation. The records created online today are the historical record for tomorrow, and by preserving the internet, we are ensuring a diverse historical record for the future.
Choice and LibTech Insights gratefully acknowledge our launch sponsor, Dimensions, a part of Digital Science. Dimensions, is the largest linked research database available and provides a unique view across the whole research ecosystem from idea to impact.
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