JISC

An article published today in the new issue of the online publication D-Lib explores the work of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC). Written by JISC’s Steve Bailey and Dave Thompson of the Wellcome Trust, the article explains how the consortium has been working collaboratively to expand the lifespan of key website materials from around 44 days (the same life expectancy as a housefly) to a century or more.

Comprising six leading UK institutions, the consortium has been working, with the permission of rights holders, on an experimental system for archiving selected UK websites – ensuring that invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources remain available for future generations.

The consortium comprises JISC, The British Library, The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, the National Library of Scotland and the Wellcome Trust. Working together since June 2004, the partners, say the authors, “came together because of a shared interest in web archiving and a common need to address its challenges on behalf of their stakeholders.”

The project has used a version of the PANDAS (Pandora Digital Archiving System) software, developed by the National Library of Australia, and partners have been archiving sites relevant to their interests and institutional expertise.

To read the article in D-Lib magazine, please go to: UKWAC article

For further information on the UK Web Archiving Consortium, please go to: UKWAC