End of Term Web Archive project update

As we near the end of a presidential term, the End of Term (EOT) Web Archive 2016 project team is planning for the 2016-2017 crawling activities. For the upcoming transition from one president to another, we will capture federal government websites (.gov, .mil, .org, etc.) in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the government. Our crawling will run from September 2016 through March 2017.

Explore now

You can access the 2008 and 2012 crawls at http://eotarchive.cdlib.org/ to see firsthand how quickly sites are removed and completely replaced between administrations. For example, if you look at the www.whitehouse.gov home page on January 20, 2009, you’ll see President Bush delivering his farewell address. On the January 22 crawl, just two days later, that content will be completely replaced with information and photos announcing President Obama’s arrival and his agenda.

January 20, 2009	January 22, 2009

In another example of how things change quickly, the House of Representatives site is significantly different between September 2008 and September 2012, including a more prominent “Public Disclosure” section on the 2012 home page.

September 15, 2008	September 27, 2012

It’s also interesting to note that some sites didn’t change very much from one term to the next. For example, the Senate home page from September 2008 to October 2012 looks quite similar.

September 15, 2008	October 30, 2012

Get involved!

The EOT project team will be looking soon for volunteers to nominate sites to crawl for the 2016-2017 end of term. We’ll post information on the EOT Archive website and via social media, so stay tuned to learn more about how you can get involved.

Background

EOT is a truly collaborative project, drawing on the skills and resources of each partner institution, including CDL, Internet Archive, Library of Congress, University of North Texas, and the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO).

The End of Term web archive collaboration began in the summer of 2008, when the project partners, all members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) and partners in the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), agreed to join forces to collaboratively archive the U.S. Government web at the end of the Bush administration.

The original goal of the project team was to execute a comprehensive harvest of the Federal Government domains (.gov, .mil, .org, etc.) in the final months of the Bush administration, and to document changes in the federal government websites as agencies transitioned to the Obama administration. The project team resumed efforts to document government website changes during the transition to Obama’s second term.