This Guide is one of the outputs from the JISC-funded PoWR project carried out jointly by ULCC (University of London Computer Centre) and UKOLN (University of Bath).
One of the goals of PoWR is to make current trends in digital preservation meaningful and relevant to information professionals with the day-to-day responsibility for looking after web resources. Anyone coming for the first time to the field of digital preservation can find it a daunting area, with very distinct terminology and concepts. Some of these are drawn from time-honoured approaches to managing things like government records or Institutional archives, while others have been developed exclusively in the digital domain.
The Project ran three workshops: in London, Aberdeen and Manchester. The workshops, organised by UKOLN, were a mixture of presentations and break-out groups, where a great deal of useful discussion took place and many ideas were generated. Much valuable and interesting input was gleaned from the mixture of professionals who participated, including people from a records management background, web managers, and other information professionals with an interest in web preservation, or experience of the difficulties and issues.
A blog was built (http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/) at the very start of the project in April 2008. Several key chapters of the Handbook (see below) originated on this blog, many of them starting life as a series of ‘what if’ scenarios or actual case studies, focusing on various challenging aspects of web content and the actual use made of systems in an HFE context. The resulting discussions and comments provided a great deal of content to assess and assimilate.
The Handbook, written by ULCC staff, is a distillation and synthesis of the material gathered via the workshops and blog; it also draws heavily on the expertise of the PoWR team in the areas of website management, records management, digital preservation, etc. The Handbook aims to provide suggestions for best practice and advice specifically for UK higher and further educational institutions, to enable the preservation of websites and web-based resources.
This Guide was developed using content from the Handbook and turning it into a practical guide for all those who would benefit from knowing how to go about preserving web resources.
This Guide has contributions from a range of people but was primarily written and reviewed by the JISC PoWR team:
University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), Senate House, South Block, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU (http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/)