http://dablog.ulcc.ac.uk/2007/12/13/ukwac-what-about-hlf-websites/
We were recently relieved to learn that the Bernie Grant Trust archives website is still alive and well at http://www.berniegrantarchive.org.uk/. For a few weeks in November 2007, the site appeared to have vanished, ostensibly another web-based resource to have fallen to the vicissitudes of short-term funding. True, the Internet Archive had captured a few impressions of it, but the site is a complex one – full of interactive elements and database-driven deliverables, to say nothing of the online exhibition and other materials which can only be experienced through the website.
Why haven’t UKWAC got a copy of this site? True, complex sites like this one tend to remain out of the reach of harvesting tools like PANDAS, which is based on HTTrack, and can’t get good results for sites which rely on complex server-side architecture. The site however is still unarchived as far as we know. ULCC’s Joanne Anthony (who had worked as the archivist for the Bernie Grant Trust) was keen to learn if there was any way of submitting the site for consideration to one of the UKWAC partners. There is indeed an online submissions form available, but this merely delivers a message to the UKWAC webmaster, who then forwards the request to the most appropriate partner. It would help considerably if the individual collection policies of each partner were made more manifest and published on the public site. But the visitor to www.webarchive.org.uk will find only a sketchy description of these policies, for example “The British Library will focus on sites of cultural, historical and political importance.”
Among UKWAC partners, the BL and the TNA are known to be directing their energies on certain specialised collection strands. These are given more descriptive paras at http://info.webarchive.org.uk/col.html, yet the underlying pattern or theme of these collections is not apparently obvious. At least three of them – the Tsunami, General Election and London Terrorist attack strands – appear to be based primarily on the fact that the sites are ephemeral and most in danger of loss (regardless of their informational or evidentiary value as records).
It is not clear how a concerned individual, or a member of the DP Community, might be empowered to somehow influence UKWAC’s collection policies for the better. In the case of the Bernie Grant website, Joanne’s interest was to see minority ethnic groups better represented in UK archival collections; but another approach would be to see it within in the larger group of ‘websites funded by Heritage Lottery Funding’. It seems likely there are many such project sites, all with short-term funding and therefore potentially at risk of being removed from cyberspace at any time, yet containing unique digital materials of huge potential cultural value. As a discrete collection of websites, it has parallels with JISC’s collection focus, ie JISC-funded projects which are occupying web space on a similar short-term lease. How can we persuade the relevant funding bodies to ensure their web outputs are archived, as JISC already does?
2 Comments
> How can we persuade the relevant funding bodies to ensure
> their web outputs are archived, as JISC already does?
As well as JISC, UK Research Councils now mandate that “outputs from current and future research must be preserved and remain accessible not only for the next few years but for future generations” (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/)). It does sound like HLF should take the electronic outputs of their projects more seriously.
I agree that there should be a more proactive and holistic approach by the digital archiving community to ensure that these vital HLF project outputs are not lost altogether from the historical record; especially as HLF “has a long-standing track record in supporting community participation in archival activity led by organisations which are typically under-represented in formal heritage collections.”
After hearing an inspiring talk by Dr Andrew Flinn ["Documenting the Margins"] at the UK Society of Archivists Conference (2006), I was personally struck by the alarming rate at which our digital heritage is disappearing. Dr Flinn highlighted the transient history of the increasing number of minority/dissenting voices, whose heritage is only documented via websites, blogs, wikis and social software (with many seeking to collaborate and communicate using these new tools). I support the view that it falls under our professional remit to preserve this heritage and to determine which of these new technologies pose new challenges for the Digital Archiving community.
Too often the voices of those on the margins have been written out of history altogether, and it’s therefore our duty to responsibly leave behind a more truthful picture of the past for future generations ie endeavouring to ensure that all formats and all histories are preserved.
2 Trackbacks
[...] the acronymns (UKWAC, HLF, ULCC, PANDAS, ZeBRAS….OK, I made the last one up) there’s an interesting article on the blog of the University of London Computer Centre’s Digital Archives staff about what [...]
[...] for the mic to ask a question about what I call ‘endangered resources’. We have already blogged about this on dablog, when my colleague Joanne Anthony raised a question about a web resource owned by a smallish [...]