![\"Documenting](\"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/COVID_wayback-850x478.jpg\")
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At the Archives and Rare Books Library, we recently began using Archive-It<\/a> to preserve important university websites<\/a>. The average life span of a webpage is between 44 and 100 days<\/a>. Web pages are notoriously fragile documents, and many of the web resources we take for granted are at risk of disappearing.<\/p>\n As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, we are using Archive-It to capture various UC domain webpages dedicated to the pandemic\u2019s impact on the university community. This kind of rapid response web archiving will ensure we preserve a historical record of this monumental event at UC for future researchers. You can currently view the UC COVID-19 website archive<\/a>, which is being updated on a daily basis.<\/p>\n So far, we have collected several gigabytes of data, and over 20 websites, including each college\u2019s COVID-19 page. Since some pages update more frequently than other, we schedule crawls (i.e. the process of archiving a webpage) of pages like https:\/\/www.uc.edu\/publichealth.html<\/a> on a more frequent basis in order to capture all of the changes.<\/p>\n The Archives and Rare Books Library is not the only archival repository documenting the experience of COVID-19. Dozens of other institutions<\/a>, including many other Ohio college and university archives, are also collecting and preserving this fast-moving event. One of the largest COVID-19 collections so far is a collaboration between the International Internet Preservation Consortium and Archive-It, which has now collected more than 2,763 websites<\/a> in 30 languages about the worldwide response to the pandemic.<\/p>\n There has been growing interest over the last several years in developing ethical frameworks around documenting crises within the archives profession. In response, the Society of American Archivists created a Tragedy Response Initiative Task Force<\/a> that has developed a comprehensive set of guidelines based on archivists\u2019 professional ethics and values. Previous examples of online archiving projects of crises and traumatic events include the September 11 Digital Archive<\/a>, Hurricane Katrina Digital Memory Bank<\/a>, and Documenting Ferguson<\/a>. Given the global reach of COVID-19 and the advances in web archiving and digital projects, the pandemic is likely to become one of the most well-documented global events in recent history.<\/p>\n Would you like to suggest a website that we should include in our COVID-19 UC web archive? Please email us<\/a> to suggest new UC sites to preserve in our COVID-19 web archives. Please note that at this time, we are currently only crawling public-facing webpages directly related to the UC community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Archives and Rare Books Library, we recently began using Archive-It to preserve important university websites. The average life span of a webpage is between 44 and 100 days. Web pages are notoriously fragile documents, and many of the … Continue reading