The announcement below may be of interest>>>>>

Dennis
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Dennis Nicholson
Centre for Digital Library Research

-----Original Message-----
From: A JISC announce list. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Katie GARDENER [7256]
Sent: 22 June 2004 11:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Press Release: Launch of UK Web Archiving Consortium


Press Release

Wonders of the web captured forever...

Launch of UK Web Archiving Consortium will dramatically boost lifespan of
key web materials

Launched today, the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) aims to expand the
lifespan of website materials from around 44 days (the same life expectancy
as a housefly) to a century or more. Comprising six leading UK institutions,
the UKWAC will work, with the permission of rights holders, on an
experimental system for archiving selected key UK websites - ensuring that
invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources remain available for
future generations.

The UKWAC - comprising The British Library, Joint Information Systems
Committee of the Higher and Further Education Councils (JISC), The National
Archives, The National Library of Wales, the National Library of Scotland
and the Wellcome Trust - will run for an initial period of two years, during
which approximately 6,000 websites will be collected and archived.

Consortium members will obtain the permission of website owners to archive
selected sites whilst working collaboratively to explore how to develop
compatible selection policies and to investigate the complex technical
challenges involved in collecting and archiving web material.

Each consortium member will select and 'capture' content relevant to its
subject and/or domain. For example, the British Library will archive sites
reflecting national culture and events of historical importance. These could
include web pages focusing on key events in national life, museum web pages,
e-theses, selected blogs to support research material and web-based literary
and creative projects by British subjects.

Wellcome will preserve a record of medicine on the web whilst The National
Archives will focus on archiving selected materials from six main clusters
of government departments. The Scottish and Welsh national libraries will
collect material reflecting the culture and history of Scotland and Wales
and JISC will preserve websites from leading-edge, innovative ICT projects
in UK Higher and Further Education.

Infrastructure costs, such as software, hardware, and ongoing technical
development and support will be shared equally amongst the Consortium
members. UKWAC will use HTTrack - the open source web crawler to acquire
files for storage. The software to carry out the archiving processes -
PANDORA Digital Archiving System (PANDAS) - has already been developed and
tested by the National Library of Australia and its partners for archiving
Australian websites and making them accessible through PANDORA the
Australian national Web Archive (see: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html).


PANDAS can be set to automatically tag, gather and prepare pages for public
display. If pages are not suitable for immediate public access, due to
commercial, cultural or privacy reasons, PANDAS can manage appropriate
access restrictions.
UKWAC members have selected Magus Research Limited to help extend the PANDAS
software for UK needs and provide the shared hardware and technical support
they require.

David Thomas, Head of Government and Technology at The National Archives,
said: 'From government organisations posting travel advice to newlyweds
putting their wedding photos online, websites provide a unique insight into
the political and social world we live in today. Through collaboration in
the UKWAC, The National Archives is taking steps to ensure that government
websites are preserved for future generations.'

Lynne Brindley, Chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition and Chief
Executive of The British Library said: 'The launch of UKWAC is an essential
step in helping us to understand the scope of the UK web space and how we
can set about developing a selective yet useful national web archive.
Initially this will be on a voluntary basis, although it is anticipated that
secondary legislation will, in due course, allow the BL - and the other
legal deposit libraries - to collect web materials. Working with other UKWAC
members, we can make real progress in developing complementary selection
policies, exploring the best ways to collect and archive web materials and
refining how we work together.'