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

2 posts from June 2022

29 June 2022

What content should I nominate on the UEFA Women’s Euro to the UK Web Archive?

By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, British Library

a blue banner image with the UK Web Archive, British Library, Inspired by England 2022 and the National Football Museum. A female football player kicking a ball and the text, Can you help us preserve football history? We are collecting websites about the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022. Nominate a website for us to archive:

The UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition is taking place across England from July 6 to July 31, 2022. We are collecting websites about the 2022 UEFA Women’s EURO from around the UK. You can view the collection here:  

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4278 

This blog post runs through some examples of the type of content you might like to nominate to the collection. 

We archive websites: 1. That are on a .uk or other UK geographic top-level domain such as .scot or .cymru. 2. That are published in the UK.  We do not archive: 1.Online Sound or Video platforms, in which audio-visual material is the predominant content. 2. Private Intranets and Emails. 3. Personal data in social networking sites or websites only available to restricted groups.

We archive as much openly available online content that we can identify as being published in the UK. Archiving is carried out through a mix of automated processes such as an annual domain crawl or through manual selection by the UK Web Archive teams, as well as the public nomination form.

UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022
For the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 we want content that specifically refers to the tournament. Some websites might only have a subsection or even just one page dedicated to the tournament so you can nominate that specific URL. 

We add the following type of web content to the collection:

  1. Full website
  2. Subsection of a website
  3. Individual page from a website
  4. Event page
  5. Twitter accounts

Unfortunately due to technical challenges, the only social media content we can successfully archive is Twitter. If you know of any high-profile Twitter accounts -  that aren’t personal accounts of ordinary people - then please nominate them. 

Examples of some website content we have added so far include:

Full website
Have you seen any new websites set up just for the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 tournament? Most websites will, at most, just have a dedicated subsection or page for the tournament. Some websites such as the official sponsor, Visa, highlight the tournament on their home page in the run-up to and during the tournament. This is why we have added the whole website to the collection, as it is easy for the user to navigate from the home page of the archived website during the tournament to the dedicated section for the tournament. 

Subsection of a website
The FA website has a subsection dedicated to UEFA Women’s Euro 2022. The earliest captures of this subsection are from July 2020 which you can view here:

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20200726095218/http://www.thefa.com/competitions/uefa-womens-euro-2022 

a screenshot of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 subsection of the FA website from July 26 2020. The text reads Women’s Euro set for 2022. The UEFA Women’s Euro 2021 in England is postponed until the summer of 2022] https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20200726095218/http://www.thefa.com/competitions/uefa-womens-euro-2022

Link to archived website: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20200726095218/http://www.thefa.com/competitions/uefa-womens-euro-2022 

Individual page from a website
In some cases there is just one page on a website relevant to the collection subject. When thinking about women’s football, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) doesn’t always come top of the list of potential websites. However, they have partnered with the FA to ‘engage fans in a range of musical opportunities and public events celebrating the history, ethos and future of women’s football’. What other websites have you seen that have posted an article about the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 tournament? 

You can listen back to the archived versions of the anthems on the RPO website here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20220621111257/https://www.rpo.co.uk/rpo-resound/womens-euro-anthem 

Event pages:
There are lots of events going on around the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022, these range from official events, fan-led events or venues organising their own events such as talks, book launches or watch parties for the matches. Eventbrite is one of the most popular platforms for ticketing these events, but have you seen any other platforms or websites?

A search on Eventbrite for Euro 2022 in the United Kingdom on the day of writing comes back with 500 pages

Twitter accounts:
Archived copies of Twitter accounts are only accessible through a reading room, but you can view what we have selected here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4284

We have already added the Twitter accounts of the players for England, Northern Ireland and other players based in the UK. However, we may have missed some, so please let us know through the nomination form.

Get involved 
Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form.

15 June 2022

Breaking the News - News collections in the Web Archive

By Jason Webber, Web Archive Engagement Manager, British Library

The British Library is currently running the wonderful ‘Breaking the News’ exhibition. If you’ve not seen it yet, make sure you check it out. It is open until Sun 21 Aug 2022. The exhibition explores how the News has impacted and influenced our society. This exploration includes modern digital forms of news, much of which are contained in the UK Web Archive (UKWA).

Breaking The News

The ‘News’ collection in UKWA contains over 2700 news sites that we archive. The scope ranges from major national news outlets - BBC, Guardian, Daily Mail etc. as well as many local and even hyper-local news websites. The collection includes one newspaper, The Independent, that ceased being a print paper to become exclusively a digital one.

The majority of these archived news sites and twitter accounts can only be viewed in reading rooms of UK Legal Deposit Libraries. Many, however, are openly available to view from home, lets see some examples:

Local news
In addition to major national news outlets we collect thousands of local and hyper-local news websites. Many towns, suburbs and villages maintain a local news website and we do our best to archive them.

Brixton blog

Bristol cable

Archived website - Bristol Cable

Cranfield and Marston Vale Chronicle 

International
Whilst the focus of the our collection is for UK based news, we do also collect some international or overseas publications. Tristan da Cunha, one of the remotest places on earth maintains a news website for its residents.
Irish news - TheJournal.ie

Tristan da Cunha News 

News-tristan

About journalism
As well as news outlets aimed at us the public, we also collect websites for journalists themselves.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Media helping media

News-media-helping

You can discover everything we have collected in the News collection via our website.

If you know of a UK news website (this might be about your local area), nominate it to the UK Web Archive.