Archive-It

March 11th, 2013

The Archive-It team is excited to publish our first white paper:  The Web Archiving Life Cycle Model. With this paper we hope to share web archiving best practices and processes with organizations interested in developing and/or expanding their web archiving initiatives.

This white paper is the product of a collaboration between members of the Archive-It team as well as the larger Archive-It partner community. Several partners took part in in-depth interviews regarding their experiences using Archive-It and web archiving in general, and others helped with the design iteration phase of the model and read preliminary drafts of the paper.

Above: The Web Archiving Life Cycle Model. The white paper describes each facet of the model using in depth case studies from Archive-It partner institutions.

Since its inception in early 2006, Archive-It has learned a great deal  from our 237 partners through web archiving support and trainings, conferences, professional organizations, and project teams. The Web Archiving Life Cycle Model is a culmination of lessons learned so far in a burgeoning archival field. We hope it will assist institutions that may struggle to develop best practices and methodologies for accomplishing their web archiving goals.

The Web Archiving Life Cycle Model encompasses the following web archiving processes:

•    Vision and Objectives
•    Resources and Workflow
•    Access/Use/Reuse
•    Preservation
•    Risk Management
•    Appraisal and Selection
•    Scoping
•    Data Capture
•    Storage and Organization
•    Quality Assurance and Analysis

You can download the white paper from the publications section of our website and we welcome any and all feedback.