The document discusses the scope and quality of datasets from various national web archives that collected COVID-19 related web content. It finds that most collections had a national focus, except for the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) collection. However, the data is incomplete, with only 6 of 44 European countries represented. It also finds limitations in using top-level domains to determine country of origin. More data is needed to gain further insights into cultural biases and the international representation in these archived collections.

1. What’s in a URL? Analysing COVID-19 web archive collections
November 2021, Aarhus
Karin de Wild, Friedel Geeraert

2. Methodology
• Datathon (2)
• Test hypotheses (WARCnet interviews)
• Test data quality

3. Online press
Data quality + scope
(Inter)national scope
Social media

4. “All initiatives except for the IIPC had a national focus.”
Hypothesis (from WARCnet interviews with Web archivists)
(Inter)national scope

5. (Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive

6. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

7. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

8. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

9. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

10. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

11. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

12. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
The (inter)national focus of Web archives differs.
BnF : Bibliothèque nationale de France
BnL : Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg
IIPC : International Internet Preservation Consortium
KB : Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands
NSL : National Széchényi Library, Hungary
RDL : Royal Danish Library
UKWA : UK Web archive
(Inter)national scope of Covid-19 special collections
Countries represented in Covid-19 special collections.

13. Size Covid-19 special collections
Total unique domain names collected by each Web archive.
National websites in Covid-19 special collections
Percentage of national websites that are represented in Covid-19 special collections in each Web archive.
Note: A national website is a unique domain name with the corresponding country code top-level domain (ccTLD).
For example: Of the 1.482 unique domain names in UKWA, 1.051 domain names end with “.uk” (the country code for the United Kingdom).
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.

14. National websites in Covid-19 special collections (relative)
National websites represented in each Web archive.
Size Covid-19 special collections
Total unique domain names collected by each Web archive.
Most Web archives do have a national focus...
Note: A national website is a unique domain name with the corresponding country code top-level domain (ccTLD).
For example: Of the 1.482 unique domain names in UKWA, 1.051 domain names end with “.uk” (the country code for the United Kingdom).
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.

15. National websites in Covid-19 special collections (relative)
National websites represented in each Web archive.
Size Covid-19 special collections
Total unique domain names collected by each Web archive.
Note: A national website is a unique domain name with the corresponding country code top-level domain (ccTLD).
For example: Of the 1.482 unique domain names in UKWA, 1.051 domain names end with “.uk” (the country code for the United Kingdom).
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
… The IIPC is the only collection without a national focus.

16. Data quality + scope
Critical reflections on the data quality to further improve the
dataset and refine (the scope of the) research questions.

17. www.webarchive.org.uk (ccTLD .uk = United Kingdom)

18. Incomplete data
Countries represented in the IIPC collection (using variable ‘ Country’, derived from ccTLD) .
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.

19. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
Incomplete data
Countries represented in the IIPC collection (using variable ‘ Country’, derived from ccTLD) .

20. Not all countries of publication can be derived from the ccTLD.
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
Incomplete data
Countries represented in the IIPC collection (using variable ‘ Country’, derived from ccTLD) .

21. Incomplete data
Size of national collections in our dataset (excl. IIPC collection).
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.

22. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
6 of the 44 European countries are represented within our dataset
Incomplete data
Size of national collections in our dataset (excl. IIPC collection).

23. Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
BnF (France) collected most unique domain names.
Incomplete data
Size of national collections in our dataset (excl. IIPC collection).

24. Incomplete data
Size of national collections in the IIPC collection.
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
Also IIPC is included in our dataset.

25. Incomplete data
Size of national collections in the IIPC collection.
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
Do we have information about who contributed to this collection?

26. International scope of the dataset
Source: Susan Aasman, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Karin de Wild, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer, "Dataset COVID-19 Special Collections ", 2021.
Those who do not see themselves reflected in
national heritage are excluded from it.
Stuart Hall
“
“
More data is needed to gain further insights in cultural bias.

27. “The BnL collections should hold many news articles.”
Hypothesis (from WARCnet interviews with Web archivists)
Online press

28. 96.38%
3.62%
Seed list of BnL: media versus other actor categories
News Media, International News Media, Media Other categories

29. Seed list of BnL: categories other than media
Twitter Government Non-profit, mutual aid Blog Commercial, Business
Facebook Healthcare Youtube, Vimeo Public Institution Local Government
Festival Religion Political Party University Livetickers
Education Professional Chamber Scientific Research Foundation Advisory commission
Foreign government European Union Podcast Economic Interest Group Ombudsman
Soundcloud Wikipedia

30. Data quality + scope
Changes over time
Another limitation of the data is that there is no
variable ‘timestamp’, while both the collections and
the websites themselves change over time.

31. 0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
March April May June July August
Evolution of seeds added to the collection at the BnL
Series1 Series2 Series3
Lack of timestamp

32. “Social media were excluded from the IIPC collaborative
collection.”
Hypothesis (from WARCnet interviews with Web archivists)
Social media

33. 0
166 172
0
37 44
0
26 26
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
Interview Seed list Archive-It
Youtube Twitter Facebook
Social media in IIPC collaborative COVID-19 collection
Different levels to analyse
Crawl scope
1 = Full seed host or directory
2 = Crawl one page only
3 = Seed page plus 1 click of all
links on seed page
Number of seeds on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.com domains

34. Data quality + scope
Crawl scope
The seed list is a starting point and does not offer an
exhaustive overview of the collection itself.

35. Next steps:
• Improve figures and tables
• WARCnet paper

36. Karin de Wild, Friedel Geeraert, Jane Winters, Nicola Bingham, Niels Brügger, Frédéric Clavert,
Sophie Gebeil, Federico Nanni, Caroline Nyvang, Valérie Schafer, Helle Strandgaard Jensen,
Katherina Schmid
Thank you!