Making the Case for Web Archiving: IIPC Video

The International Internet Preservation Consortium has released a brief montage of eloquent and compelling interviews with Web preservation experts discussing the value and scope of this work.  Representatives from the British Library, the Swiss National Library, the Library of Congress and many others discuss the unique challenges facing Web archivists, and the value of the collaborative efforts of the IIPC.   The video provides an excellent starting point for conveying why libraries have undertaken Web archiving, and for highlighting the resulting community of practice.

The IIPC, in addition to providing a forum for sharing information and experience, also sponsors the development of many of the open source tools that have made Web archiving possible for libraries.  The CDL has contributed to IIPC efforts since 2005, and became an IIPC member in 2006.

Selected quotes from the video:

“Imagine a researcher in 50 years’ time, wanting to study our time to see what we experienced, how we lived, without having the Internet…” – René Voorberg, National Library of the Netherlands

“All of the Internet is at risk.  All of the Web could disappear when organizational priorities change, when governments change, when culture changes, so unless there’s an active effort taken to record it, it could be forgotten.”  – Gordon Mohr, Internet Archive

“For five centuries in France, we’ve been collecting things, and at the moment we collected them, we were not sure whether it had any value.  I can really imagine a situation where someone comes to the library and says ‘Hey, I want to get the blog of my grandfather’.” – Gildas Illien, Bibliothèque Nationale

“Together I think we have learned far more than any one organization can learn alone.” – Martha Anderson, Library of Congress