In partnership with a handful of other research libraries and archives, the IUB Libraries are leading an effort to preserve the World Wide Web.

The very qualities that make the Web such a valued source for information—its immediacy and ever-changing content—make it a challenge for archivists whose mission is to preserve information for future researchers. Web pages that are live one day may vanish the next.

“Part of our history and culture is disappearing,” says University Archivist Phil Bantin, who has stepped up efforts to archive born-digital information published on the IU Web site.   

Mission-critical records such as course bulletins are now published only online, Bantin says, but may be lost forever because of inconsistent efforts to retain them. The Office of University Archives and Records Management, which Bantin directs, is the most comprehensive source of information on IU’s history.

 “My job is to take the long-term view,” Bantin says, “and to give researchers the information they need to understand and reconstruct the history and culture of IU.”

Librarians and archivists, long the stewards of the historical record, are at the forefront of the movement to archive digital information that will support their constituents’ scholarly needs. Indiana University joined the Archive-It project at the invitation of the Research Libraries Group, a national organization of libraries and cultural organizations.

In addition to archiving IU Web pages, Bloomington-based archivists and librarians are also capturing state and local documents from the state of Indiana and government statistical Web sites from as many as 100 nations from around the world. The IUB Libraries have the second largest collection of archived sites.

“We view this an extension of our regular collection development activities,” says Cecile Jagodzinski, director of collection development for the IUB Libraries, who chaired the committee to determine which Web sites the librarians would capture, and how often.

 "Libraries select and catalog books. In this case we’re selecting and cataloging born-digital information,” Jagodzinski says. “We’re making decisions in much the same way—to support academic disciplines on campus and to fulfill our mission as the leading research library in Indiana.”

The non-profit Internet Archive, founded more than a decade ago, has long offered access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. But that undertaking, though free, only provides access to the Web site through the Internet address and archiving date. 

In partnership with the Research Libraries Group, the Internet Archive now offers a service that gives libraries more control over what pages they capture and how often. As a great benefit to scholars, Web sites may also be searched by keyword. The IU Libraries subscribe to the service to meet the needs of the university’s researchers.

“One of the main advantages of the Archive-It service,” Bantin says, “is that we can identify which Web sites we want to capture and how frequently we want them crawled. We can differentiate between sites that are more active and identify what’s of value. And that’s a great service to the university.”

To access the Web sites archived by the IUB Libraries, go to: www.libraries.iub.edu/webarchives