The future of the past of the web

The workshop has a programme of invited talks and discussion panels by UK and international speakers, featuring use cases of web archives and exciting new developments. Web archives are no longer just individual web pages for reference but also aggregated datasets with inherent properties which can be exploited for many new possibilities. Access to archived web data in bulk, and machine-to-machine interaction are definitely the new trends!

Jisc, The British Library and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) invite you to attend their 3rd joint web archiving workshop on 7 October, at the British Library Conference Centre. The previous 2 workshops were held in 2006 and 2009.

The Web expands at an astonishing rate. Statistics suggest that more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the web every minute. This rapid expansion continues to challenge those charged with preserving an effective memory of the web.

Memory institutions – in particular national libraries and archives - have been central to web archiving. Since the mid 1990s, they have captured a dynamic and highly distributed snapshot of the web as it evolved. These growing web archives provide an untapped resource for creativity, innovation and enterprise. The web archiving community has grown as more institutions establish their own web archiving programmes. Universities and researchers are also taking part in this effort and commercial archiving services have started to appear.

Use and impact of web archives are under-explored topics in discussions about web archiving. Alternative modes of access and new types of exploitation mean that the time is ripe for another examination of how the web archive collections are being used and what opportunities they open up.

What will the workshop cover?

The workshop has a programme of invited talks and discussion panels by UK and international speakers, featuring use cases of web archives and exciting new developments. Web archives are no longer just individual web pages for reference but also aggregated datasets with inherent properties which can be exploited for many new possibilities. Access to archived web data in bulk, and machine-to-machine interaction are definitely the new trends!