Web archiving: a feasibility study for JISC and the Wellcome Trust

Purpose of study

In March 2002, the Wellcome Trust and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) awarded a contract to UKOLN to undertake a feasibility study into web archiving. The aims of this study were to provide the Wellcome Trust and the JISC with:

• an analysis of existing web archiving arrangements and to determine to what extent they address the needs of the UK research and FE/HE communities
• recommendations on how the Wellcome Trust and JISC could begin to develop web archiving initiatives to meet the needs of their constituent communities.

Recognising that the legal implications of web archiving - copyright, data protection, defamation, etc. - are a key concern of any would-be web archivist, UKOLN contracted the Centre for IT and Law at the University of Bristol to undertake a separate study into the legal issues of web archiving.

To validate the findings of both studies, an international advisory board - comprising representatives from the British Library, National Library of Medicine, Library of Congress, Internet Archive and the National Library of Australia - was established. The reports were circulated to this group in early December 2002 and, without exception, the findings and recommendations were fully endorsed.