We cannot put this off any longer….A history of British social security using web archives

1. sdu.dk
#sdudk
October 2022
Department of History
Department of History
We cannot put this
off any longer…
.
A history of British social security using web
archives
.
gmil@sdu.dk | @MillieQED

2. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Millward plays the
hits!
 Historians have been slow to embrace web
archives
 Lots of great literature on web archives in their
own right – and more continues to be produced
 But little which uses web archives as one source
among many.
 Historians need to evangelise, train each other
better, and do more work so we have a richer
literature to draw from
Image: Fyrsten, LP (2013). CC A-SA 3.0. Wikicommons.

3. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Image: Joseph Decreux, Self-portrait, yawning (1783). Public domain. Wikicommons.

4. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Sick notes
The history of medical certification from the
1940s to the 2010s
Key part of the story is the digitisation of
sick notes and the massive increase in web
usage in 2000s
Cannot tell the story without the web…
Cannot tell the story just with the web…
(free open access PDF)

5. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Stuck together with
chewing gum and
gaffer tape…
Reports from states, companies and NGOs
no-longer available online (link rot)
Searching (a section of) the British Library’s
archive using the SHINE interface
From c. 1996 to 2003, clipping to Evernote,
saving around 165 pages
Only ever designed to augment my other
documentary sources – not a “robust” study
of sickness on the web

6. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Useful “public”
sources
“Spotty Muldoon” from a thirty-something’s
blog
Archived newspaper and magazine articles
and interviews
Memories from the early web, as well as of
the early web…
Clearly designed for public consumption –
as companies or as self-conscious public
bloggers

7. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Useful “private” stuff
 Blogs that were clearly not intended for wide
distribution, discussing very sensitive things
 Message boards that were semi-public, intended
for specific communities
 A lot of personal information, especially medical
information
 Most pseudonymous via “usernames” – but not
all. A determined bad-faith individual might
identify?

8. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
Methodological and
ethical issues…
 Made my peace with the fact I would never have
everything, nor “representativeness”…
 However, uncomfortable with ethical implications
of work with private health information
 Frustrated with self for not giving this enough
thought before publication
 Great strides in histories of the internet, but
could this clash with “traditional” disciplinary
norms?

9. sdu.dk
#sdudk
Department of History
What can we do?
Work with archives and librarians – thank
you to the National Library of Scotland!
Metaphor of “bridge building” or “closing
skills gaps” – but this takes a lot of time
from all sides
Teaching our students – but a “lag” effect
Convincing our colleagues that 2002 really
was 20 years ago…

10. sdu.dk
#sdudk
October 2022
Department of History
Department of History
Select bibliography
Brügger, Niels, ‘Digital historie og arkiveret web som historisk kilde’, Temp –
Tidsskrift for Historie (2017) 7(14): 10–29.
Gorsky, Martin, ‘Into the Dark Domain: The UK Web Archive as a source for the
contemporary history of public health’, Social History of Medicine (2015): 28(3):
596–616.
Hitchcock, Tim, ‘Confronting the digital: Or how academic history writing lost the
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Jensen, Helle Strandgaard, ‘Doing media history in a digital age: Change and
continuity in historiographical practices’, Media, Culture & Society (2016) 38(1):
119–28.
Lin, Jimmy, Ian Milligan, Douglas W. Oard, Nick Ruest, and Katie Shilton, ‘We
could, but should we? Ethical considerations for providing access to GeoCities
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Milligan, Ian, History in the Age of Abundance?: How the Web is Transforming
Historical Research (McGill-Queens University Press, 2019), esp. pp. 195–205.
Millward, Gareth, Sick Note: A History of the Welfare State (Oxford University
Press, 2022), esp. ch. 7.
National Library of Scotland, ‘Archive of tomorrow’, nls.uk (2022).
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