(13 July 2018, Issue No:514) Virginia Tech is leading a project to make web archives more valuable to researchers worldwide by developing course materials and cyber infrastructure to teach librarians and archivists internationally how to collect, extract and analyse archived information from the World Wide Web.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services recently awarded a US$248,450 grant for the collaborative two-year project, Continuing Education to Advance Web Archiving, which ultimately aims to help archivists use new tools and capabilities to make more effective use of web archives.
Zhiwu Xie, director of digital library development for the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, is leading the team of library and archive experts to create a curriculum surrounding the technology of web archiving and challenges related to how archivists and librarians can gather the most useful information from archived internet sites and social media.
“The web is the most prominent channel of communication we have today, and web sites change all the time. The web doesn’t have a memory, so a history of time is hard to construct,” said Xie. “Web archiving is about recording that memory.”
University World News has the full article here.
