The archiving and subsequent preservation of web resources has emerged over the last few years as a critical area of work. JISC has taken a leading role in carrying out research and development activity on behalf of the higher and further education sector and has worked alongside other UK organisations (representing other sectors) to investigate the opportunities and challenges inherent in this type of work. Tools for the effective large-scale harvesting of websites are still very much in development, as are the policies and legal frameworks that are required to enable this work to be undertaken, particularly at national and international levels where the principles of collections management and the sensible division of archival responsibility across agencies, and across national borders, has yet to be established.
At the level of the individual HE/FE institution, there is plenty of scope to establish web archiving more effectively as part of their end-to-end preservation and records management strategies, and JISC is committed to commissioning work to support this process. It is anticipated that this work will benefit both the administrative and managerial strata within institutions, and also the individual researcher who is increasingly reliant on web resources as one of the principal records of activity in all fields over the last ten years or so, a significant proportion of which is no longer hosted at its original web location, and in some cases is only hosted by a dedicated archiving system.
Current and Recent Work
Archiving JISC Websites
This ongoing work is being undertaken on behalf of JISC by the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC). The objective of this work is to ensure that web materials created by JISC-funded projects are effectively archived for the long-term and are therefore immune to the vagaries of institutional hosting decisions.
The UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC)
JISC is currently one of six partners who participate in this consortium. The objective of UKWAC is to provide access to archived material and to disseminate expertise and best-practice in relation to web archiving processes.
The JISC PoWR Project
The project aims to organise workshops and produce a handbook that specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community.