Web Resources Archiving Collaboration
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Columbia University Libraries & Information Services a grant for 2013-2015 for the Web Resources Archiving Collaboration project.
Objective: To extend the effectiveness of Columbia’s web resource collecting program, and of the collective web archiving work within the US, by developing and testing models of collaboration with other research libraries, with other web archiving programs, with web content producers, and with scholars.
Collaborative collection development
Columbia is collaborating with some of its existing consortial partners to develop new thematic web archives:
Borrow Direct Music Librarians Group, Contemporary Composers Web Archive (CCWA)
Ivies Plus Art and Architecture Group, Collaborative Architecture, Urbanism, and Sustainability Web Archive (CAUSEWAY)
Incentive awards for tool development
The grant includes funding to be awarded by Columbia to external applicants for proposals to support the development of tools and techniques to improve web archiving and enhance the functionality of web archives.
Incentive award winners (final reports and source code)
Exploring best practices for preservable websites
Collaboration with site owners includes an investigation into and dissemination of best practices for designing preservable websites.
Guidelines for preservable websites
Web archive assessment and use case analysis
Beginning with a focus on our Human Rights Web Archive, Columbia is gathering and analyzing data about citations to web resources in human rights scholarship, aiming to gauge the availability of cited resources on the live Web and in the HRWA and use this information to influence the selection criteria for additions to the HRWA.