UK Web Archive blog

Information from the team at the UK Web Archive, the Library's premier resource of archived UK websites

The UK Web Archive, the Library's premier resource of archived UK websites

21 March 2019

Save UK Published Google + Accounts Now!

The fragility of social media data was highlighted recently when Myspace deleted (by accident) user’s audio and video files without warning. This almost certainly resulted in the loss of many unique and original pieces of work. This is another example of how online social media platforms should not be seen as archives and that if things are important to you they should also be stored elsewhere. The UK Web Archive can play a role in this and we do what we can to preserve websites and selected social media. We do, however, need your help!

Google+
If you have a  Google + account you will have seen the warning that the service is shutting down on 2 April 2019 and have warned users to download any data they want to save by 31 March 2019.

However, it’s not easy to know how to preserve data from social media accounts and sometimes this information without the context of the platform it was hosted on doesn’t give the full picture. In a previous blog post we outlined the challenges involved in archiving social media. Currently the most popular social media platform in the UK Web Archive is Twitter, followed by Facebook, which we haven’t been able to successfully capture since 2015, and a limited amount of Instagram, Wiebo, WeChat and Google +.

Under the 2013 Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations we can legally only collect digital content published in the UK. As these platforms are hosted outside the UK there is no automated way to identify UK accounts so it requires a person to look through and identify the profiles that are added. In general, these are profiles of politicians, public figures, people renowned in their field of study, campaign groups and institutions.

So far, we only have handful of Google + profiles in the UK Web Archive but we are keen to have more.

How to save your Google+ data
If you have a Google + profile or know of other profiles published in the UK that you think should be preserved, fill in our nomination form before March 29th 2019: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

If the profiles you want to archive outside the UK you can use the save a website now function on the Internet Archive website: https://archive.org/web/

By Helena Byrne, Web Curator of Web Archiving, The British Library

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