Site Registry for the Web Archiving Service

Over 20 organizations are now using the Web Archiving Service to capture and archive Web sites.  These organizations include the University of California libraries, other UC units and organizations beyond the UC.  Web archivists have told us that they want to see a collection-planning tool that will let them see what sites other organizations are collecting, or if a particular site is already being archived.

In response to that request, the Web Archiving Service now includes the WAS Site Registry.  This feature is now available to people with WAS accounts, either as curators or administrators.  The Site Registry will tell curators which websites have been archived by other WAS curators and will provide such as the organization that captured the site, whether the content is public, how many times the site was captured and more. Sites can be looked up either by site name or by URL.  While not an access tool, the registry provides important contextual information to support the archivist’s decision-making.

We hope this enhancement to the service helps WAS curators as they plan their archives, and fosters collaborative collection building and communication.  As always, we welcome the feedback of WAS users to help us improve our service in this new arena of collection-building!  Please contact washelp@ucop.edu if you have any questions about the registry or  the Web Archiving Service.