Archiving Web Sites: A Practical Guide for Information Management Professionals

Citation

Richmond, L.M. (2007), "Archiving Web Sites: A Practical Guide for Information Management Professionals", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 310-311. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330710774174

Websites are the stuff of current and future research, full of rich resources of popular and high culture and much in between. Websites are cultural assets that contemporary society must manage and aid its intellectual capital to be passed on to future generations.

Websites also send out a constant stream of information about their creator organisations to customers, stakeholders and regulators. Managers may ask whether websites should be archived and request information on the resource implications and procedures to be followed. Web masters may wonder how long the process should take and whether it captures links and changes in site design. Website owners may be concerned to ensure access to their web archives in real time, right from their desktop. Information professionals may be unsure as to whether their web archival processes are easy, cost efficient, comprehensive and, above all, effective.

There is a great deal of information to be found on digital preservation and archiving websites both in print and online but much of it is research based and does not offer easy‐to‐follow practical advice. Adrian Brown, the author of this volume, has identified the problem and produced a solution. He describes accurately the development of web archiving as one of rapid evolution to a status of “an international, multidisciplinary concern spawning a multitude of research and practically based programmes” while creating a practical guide to the subject, which both the novice and experienced information management professional will find of value.

The book provides an overview of current best practice and is equally readable to the non‐technical as well as the technically minded person. It aims to address three audiences:

1. 1.

   policy‐makers, who must make decisions about establishing or developing an institutional web archiving programme;

2. 2.

   information management professionals, who may be required to implement a web archiving programme; and

3. 3.

   website owners and web masters, who may be required to facilitate archiving of their own websites.

Adrian Brown is the Head of Digital Preservation at The National Archives (London) where he is responsible for the long‐term preservation of born‐digital public records. His experience of managing the web archiving programme of The National Archives and his knowledge of many other international initiatives is evident in this guide.

Viewing web archiving as a workflow process, whereby web resources, whether elements from national domains or an organisation's own website, are selected, collected, preserved and delivered to users, provides a natural structure for the book. The first chapter offers a short introduction to the development of web archiving, followed by chapters covering the stages of the web archiving process, from the selection of content, through methods of collection, quality assurance and cataloguing, preservation strategies and methods of delivery to users. There are also chapters dealing with legislation compliance and risk, the selection and implementation of a web archiving model and its subsequent management and a discussion of future trends in data storage, digital preservation, and web archiving tools and technology.

The appendices provide useful tools and aids for readers. These include a list of main web archiving and preservation software tools, classified according to basic type with a description of licence required for use and website URLs for further information and free software downloads, model copyright permission documents, and a model test script for use in the quality assurance process.

The publication of this book has made the practicalities of web archiving clear for information professionals and others to follow.