The UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) is the result of collaboration between The British Library, Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher and Further Education Councils (JISC), The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, the National Library of Scotland and the Wellcome Trust.
According to David Thomas, Head of Government Archives Services at the National Archives, "From government organisations posting travel advice to newlyweds putting their wedding photos on-line, web sites provide a unique insight into the political and social world we live in today."
But with web pages currently having a life expectancy of 44 days – on a par with a housefly, according to UKWAC – the group is concerned that invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources are being lost to future generations.
The group is therefore experimenting with a web archiving system, using software that has been used in a similar scheme in Australia. UKWAC is due to run for an initial period of two years and if successful could be extended from the initial target of 6,000 web sites, to a full archive of all UK web sites.
Each consortium member will be responsible for material relevant to its subject or domain. For example, says UKWAC, the Scottish and Welsh national libraries will collect material reflecting the culture and history of Scotland and Wales, while the Wellcome Trust will take an interest in medical web sites.
Informal documents, such as blogs or discussion forums, will also be included in the archive – so as to provide a comprehensive picture of the UK on-line.
But UK copyright law requires that UKWAC obtains the permission of web site owners before their material can be archived – a factor that will undoubtedly make it difficult for the group to reach their goal of archiving all of the millions of UK web sites in existence.
According to reports, the group is actively looking for a change in the law to allow the archiving of web sites without the need to obtain consent.
The project is similar to the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation which has been building an internet library since 1996. Its purpose is to offer permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Using its Wayback Machine, anyone can examine billions of archived pages that date back to 1999.