Investigating the PROMISE of a Belgian web archive

Investigating the PROMISE of a
Belgian web archive
Sally Chambers
Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Belgium
Web archiving: best practices for digital cultural heritage
Israel, 29-30 April 2018

Overview
• Introducing the Belgian web
• PROMISE: a feasibility study for a Belgian web
archive
• Web archiving: a State of the Art
• Analysis of user requirements for a Belgian web
archive
• Research access and use of web archives

Introducing the
Belgian Web

The Belgian web is not currently
systematically archived
Introducing the Belgian web
Source: https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en

Source: http://www.belgium.be/en/about_belgium/government/federale_staat

Source:
http://www.belgium.be/en/about_belgium/government/regions

Source:
http://www.belgium.be/en/about_belgium/government/communities

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium/

Geographic distribution of domains per municipality
2017
Source: https://www.dnsbelgium.be/whois/stats
2003

Source: https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en/about-us/annual-reports

PROMISE: a feasibility study
for a Belgian web archive

PROMISE: PReserving Online Multiple
Information: towards a Belgian StratEgy
24 month project financed by Belspo
Scientific start date: 1 September 2017
Royal Library of Belgium
(Project Coordinator)
State Archives Belgium
Research Group for Media and ICT and
Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities
Research Centre on Information, Law & Society
Unité de Recherche et de Formation en Sciences
de l’Information et de la Documentation (URF-SID)

• Identify current best practices in web-archiving
and apply them to the Belgian context
• Pilot web-archiving in Belgium
• Pilot access to (and use of) the pilot Belgian web
archive for scientific research
• Make recommendations for a sustainable web-
archiving service for Belgium
PROMISE: PReserving Online Multiple
Information: towards a Belgian StratEgy

Royal Library of Belgium State Archives Belgium
•Belgian legal deposit law (1965, 2008)
•Preserve all types of documents
a) Published in the Belgian territory
b) Published abroad by Belgians
•Websites as ‘publications’ (like books,
periodicals etc)
•Once part of the legal deposit
publications can not be removed
•Is web-archiving ‘depositing’?
•Web-archiving has been added to the
Royal Library’s mission as of 25.12.2016
•Federal law on archives (1955)
•Preserve documentary heritage of the
federal public authorities
•Archival lifecycle (includes retention and
destruction)
•Information produced by public
authorities and published through digital
media (internet, intranet extranet, social
media)
•Web Archiving is part of the mission of
the State Archives
Archiving the Belgian web

Source: http://www.kbr.be/nl/wet-van-8-april-1965-tot-instelling-van-het-
wettelijk-depot
Archiving the Belgian web:
Legal Deposit

Source: https://www.kbr.be/nl/nieuws/koninklijke-bibliotheek-bewaart-
binnenkort-alle-digitale-publicaties
Legal Deposit

Source: http://www.arch.be/docs/loi_archives_1955_2009.pdf
Federal Archival Law

Federated web archive?

Source: https://uc3.cdlib.org/2016/10/21/collaborative-web-archiving-with-
cobweb/
Federated web archive?

Web archiving:
State of the Art

• 1st PROMISE Report
• Provide an overview of
international best practices
in web-archiving
• v.1 of the report (Jan 2018):
10 initiatives in 7 countries
• v. 2 of the report (Spring
2018): 2 additional
countries
Web-archiving: State-of-the-art

Methodology
• Literature review with 15
page bibliography
• Semi-structured interviews
with web-archiving
initiatives
• Synthesis: selection,
access, legal & technical
issues
• Recommendations

Web archiving initiatives analysed:
1. Netherlands (NL & NA)
2. France (NL & INA)
3. Luxembourg (NL)
4. United Kingdom (NL & NA)
5. Denmark (NL)
6. Portugal (Arquivo.pt)
7. Ireland (NL)
8. Canada (v2) (NA & NL – EN &
FR)
9. Switzerland (v2) (NL,
multilingual)

Selection
• What is Belgian web content?
• Thorough reflection on selection
policy required, e.g. selective,
.be crawl, mixed
• Institutional context of the
Belgian Royal Library & State
Archives
• Involve users!
• Inclusion of social media?
• Develop a partnership with DNS
Belgium Web archiving: best practices for digital cultural heritage

Access
• Variety of access options, from
no access to freely accessible
• FAIR (Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable, Reusable) as
guiding principle
• Publication of seed lists
• Range of search options
(metadata is a priority)
• Data-level access to the web
archive (e.g. WARC files)
• User feedback loop

Legal
• Extension of Legal Deposit
legislation in BE to include digital
publication (implementation
guidelines for web-archives
needed)
• Scope of competence: i) .be
domain, ii) .be domain +
additional selection criteria
• Copyright, protection of personal
data (e.g. GDPR), illegal content
• Is remote access possible within
the current Belgian legal
framework?

Technical
• Analysis of key tools and
platforms (e.g. NetArchive Suite,
BCweb, …)
• Analysis of data formats (WARC
is predominant)
• Models of managing the technical
process (from outsourcing to full
in-house management)
• Explore possibility of IIPC
membership

Digital Scholar Article (Open Access)

Analysis of user requirements
for a Belgian web archive

• Analysis of requirements
related to selection and use
of web archives
• Runs April 2018 - 31 May
2018
• Target 200+ respondents
(currently ca. 150 … )
• Local, regional, national and
international focus
Web-archiving: survey

3 target groups for survey:
1. research: students,
academics, anyone involved
in research more broadly
2. archives, libraries,
governmental institutions
3. general public

General questions
• Experience with web
archives?
• Demographic info (e.g.
gender, nationality,
education)
• Level of digital literacy

Specific questions
• Research questions,
subjects of interest for web-
archiving
• Current levels of
satisfaction with web-
archives
• Preferred search options &
functionalities
• Methods of access, e.g.
APIs
• Interest in collaborating with

https://ghentunipss.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0VtcsXxdBmgWS2x

Research access and
use of web archives

http://netpreserve.org/web-archiving/about-archiving
… and research-use is beyond access
From preservation via access
to research-use

RESAW: Research infrastructure for the
Study of Archived Web materials
http://resaw.eu & https://archivedweb.blogs.sas.ac.uk/papers/

Archived web for research
http://buddah.projects.history.ac.uk/news/bursaries/

https://uwaterloo.ca/web-archive-group/
Archived web for research

Research access to the web-archive:
data-level access
Access to the WARC Files
https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/209643793-Partner-
Guide-to-Downloading-Archive-It-Data

Source: http://www.netpreserve.org
Connecting with the community

Web-archiving workshop
Amsterdam, 6 June 2018
http://2018.dhbenelux.org/workshops/#born_digital
Introduction to Born-Digital Heritage:
from harvesting to analysing web archives
• Introduction to web archiving
• Research using the archived web
• Data-level access to the archived web
• Hands-on web archive challenge!

Sally Chambers
Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities
sally.chambers@ugent.be
Thank you!

Investigating the PROMISE of a Belgian web archive

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