Guide to Preservation of Web Resources

Web resources are those delivered by a web browser so they may appear not only on the Institutional website but also on other websites and web systems. Some examples are:

• Institutional and departmental records, with legal and business requirements governing their retention and good maintenance.
• Content affecting students, such as prospectuses and e-learning objects.
• Administrative, research, teaching and project outputs.
• Evidence of other activities (e.g. conferences).

Many of the resources of an Institutional website may be stored in a CMS or within well-established managed systems, such as:

• Those for managing assessments and examinations.
• Online libraries.
• Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
• Online teaching courses and course content.
• Institutional repositories.
• Digital collections used for study.
• E-learning objects and teaching materials.
• E-portfolios.

In these cases, the resources are simply being accessed or delivered by a web browser so, except for those in a CMS, the preservation should be of the system rather than the pages as they appear on the website. In the case of a CMS both the system and the pages produced need to be preserved.

But the increasing use of Web 2.0 services and applications means that many resources exist in less well-managed systems, many of which are hosted outside the Institution, including:

• Blogs Blogger (e.g. WordPress, Edublogs, Warwick Blogs).
• Wikis (e.g. Mediawiki, Wetpaint, Tiddlywiki).
• Social bookmarking (e.g. Delicious, CiteULike, Connotea).
• Media sharing services (e.g. Flickr, Slideshare, YouTube. (Scribd, DeviantArt)).
• Social networking systems (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Elgg, Crowdvine, LinkedIn).
• Collaborative editing tools (e.g. Google Docs).
• Syndication and notification technologies (e.g. Netvibes, Technorati).
• Instant messaging (e.g. Facebook Chat, Google Chat, Skype, Jabber, Windows Messenger).

Which web resources need to be preserved?

To determine which web resources to preserve it is helpful to consider which of three categories best describes the resource – record, publication or artefact. If it is a record or a publication, the resource should be considered in the context of existing policies and procedures for these types of document.

A record is ‘recorded information, in any form, created or received and maintained by an organisation or person in the transaction of business or conduct of affairs and kept as evidence of such activity.’ (http://www.recordsmanagement.ed.ac.uk/InfoStaff/RMstaff/RM_framework.htm)

A web resource can be considered a record if it:

• constitutes evidence of business activity that needs to be referred to again;
• is evidence of a transaction;
• needs to be kept for legal reasons.

Some examples:

• The website contains the only copy of an important record. Web resources should not be removed or deleted without establishing if they are the only copy.
• The website, or a set of web pages, in itself constitutes evidence of Institutional activity. The history of this evidence is visible through the various iterations and changes of the website.
• The website is in itself evidence of the publication programme, or has such evidence embedded within its systems. If it is necessary to show, as evidence, that the Institution published a particular document on a certain date, then the logs in the CMS constitute an evidential record. In some cases, this may be needed to protect against liability.
• A transaction of some sort that has taken place through the website (transaction does not just mean money has changed hands). If these transactions need to be kept for legal or evidential reasons, then they are records too. The transaction may generate some form of documentation (e.g. automated email responses), which may in turn need to be captured out of the process and stored in a place where it can be retrieved and accessed.

A publication is ‘a work is deemed to have been published if reproductions of the work or edition have been made available (whether by sale or otherwise) to the public’. (National Library of Australia http://www.nla.gov.au/services/ldeposit.html)

A web resource might be considered a publication if it is:

• a web page that is exposed to the public on the website;
• an attachment to a web page (e.g. a PDF or Word Document) that is exposed on the website;
• a copy of a digital resource, e.g. a report or dissertation that has already been published by other means.

Some examples:

• Websites containing the only copy of an important publication.
• Web pages constituting a version of information that is available elsewhere. By version, it is meant that it has been rendered in some way to bring it into the website. This rendering may include, for example, the addition of navigation elements that make it different from the original source.
• A web page constituting a mix of published information. For example, a page of original Institutional material combined with an RSS feed from outside the Institution.

An artefact is ‘anything else that isnt a record or a publication by the above definitions, but which is still worth preserving, can be understood as an artefact’.

A web resource might be considered an artefact if, for example, it:

• has intrinsic value to the Institution for historical or heritage purposes;
• is an example of a significant milestone in the Institutions technical progress, for example the first instance of using a particular type of software.

Preserved artefacts could include image collections (still and moving), databases, e-learning objects, digitised objects or research objects.