Archiving Websites: A Practical Guide for Information Management Professionals

Citation

Srisa‐ard, S. (2007), "Archiving Websites: A Practical Guide for Information Management Professionals", Online Information Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 537-538. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520710780476

The internet and websites are undoubtedly the largest cultural and commercial information resource of the moment, and it is easy to forget about this momentary nature and the vagaries of online information availability. Therefore, information management professionals must actively preserve selected important websites and their content for future access and study. This book intends to provide a broad introduction and overview the world of web archiving and reflects the needs and concerns of those with an interest in web archiving at all levels. It provides an overview of current best practice with practical guidance for anyone seeking to establish a web archiving programme, and especially to meet the needs of policy makers, information management professionals, and website owners and webmasters. The web archiving process is viewed as a workflow whereby web resources are selected, collected, preserved and delivered to users.

The book is organised into ten chapters plus a glossary, five appendices, bibliography and index. Chapter 1 is an introduction to and overview of the book. It also presents the interesting finding that the average lifespan of a website is 75‐100 days. Another researcher has found that 44 per cent of websites available in 1998 could no longer be found in 1999. Chapter 2, “The development of web archiving”, presents a survey of web archiving history, including current initiatives. Chapters 3 to 7 offer detailed guidance or principles and practice for information management professionals who are implementing a web archiving programme. The topics cover the selection, collection methods, quality assurance and cataloguing, preservation, and delivery to users.

Chapters 8 and 9 address legal issues and factors in managing a web archiving programme, providing an overview of the benefits, risks, resource implications and other management issues. These two chapters provide useful information for policy makers who must make decisions about establishing an institutional web archiving programme. The final chapter, “Future trends”, looks to the future, examining emerging trends and their potential impacts. Each chapter includes an introduction, conclusion, notes, and references to source of further information for those who wish to dig deeper into such matters.

Five appendices provide useful sources and information for further study. Appendix 1 lists the main software tools for web archiving and preservation described in the text together with their websites. A URL is also given if the software is freely available to download. Appendix 2 provides an example of a model permissions form, the types of forms required for securing permissions to archive web resources from website owners and a set of FAQs. Appendix 3 provides a model test script for use in the quality assurance process. Appendix 4 provides a model issues log to be use for recording issues. The last appendix provides a sample job description for generic web archivists.

Overall this is recommended as a useful starting point for anyone working on web archiving programmes, but for more detailed insights one will need to consult a range of additional resources.