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

71 posts categorized "Collections"

08 August 2022

Cats on the web and in the web archive

By Jason Webber, Web Archive Engagement Manager, British Library

Domestic cats have featured in human life for thousands of years. They can make an incredible impact on many of our lives and even if you don’t have one, you may have enjoyed watching, reading or listening about them online. Have you watched a ‘funny cat’ video, laughed at ‘Grumpy cat’ or simply enjoyed a colleague’s pet making an appearance in a work video call?

It seems appropriate , therefore, on International Cat day, to show a few things ‘cat’ that we have in the archive.

Larry the No.10 Cat - Political scrapbook

Screenshot of the Political Scrapbook website with an article about Larry the Downing street cat

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170708173602/https://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/02/larry-the-downing-street-lolcat/

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home

Pictures of cats for adoption on the battersea dogs and cats home website

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20110117154300/http://www.battersea.org.uk/cats/new_cats_gallery/index.html

WW1 cats - Durham at War website

Screenshot of the Durham at War website - ww1 cats

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170702092930/http://ww1countydurham.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/wwi-cats-on-internet.html

Cat Behaviour - Cat Protection website

Screenshot of the Cat behaviour page on the cat Protection website

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20170215160335/http://www.cats.org.uk/cat-care/cat-behaviour-hub

Teapots, Teapots, Teapots - Cheshire Cats

Screenshot of the Teapots website showing a cheshire cat teapot

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20141030023644/http://teapotsteapotsteapots.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/cheshire-cat-teapot.html

Pi-powered cat feeder

Screenshot of Pi-powered cat feeder website

www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20141021035626/http://www.raspberrypi.org/pi-powered-cat-feeder/

If you haven't had enough cat chat, take a look at our 2020 blog - Cats v Dogs on the archived web.

Fan of dogs, their day is on the 26th August.

29 July 2022

Web archiving the UEFA Women’s Euros in Wigan

By Georgina Bentley, Service Manager Community-based Customer & Cultural Services at Wigan Council

Image of a jersey commissioned for the Around The Match project hanging over the top of a rusty goal post in a sports field with multiple soccer and rugby pitches.

Introduction

The Heritage Fund awarded £500,000 to a programme which is recording the hidden history of women’s football and launched a celebration of the game, its players, and communities in partnership with the UEFA Women’s EUROs.

Alongside this programme, the UK Web Archive is also archiving UK-published websites about the tournament. In this guest blog post, we hear from Georgina Bentley from Wigan Council about their contribution to the collection.

Wigan Council

Wigan Council is the local authority for the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in the North West of England. The Council have been one of the 10 host cities for the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, hosting 4 matches at the Leigh Sports Village.

What did you collect for your museum/archive while working on this project?

From the start we wanted to ensure the stories of our local pioneers were central to our collection approach. Supported brilliantly by our archive volunteers, we established a much deeper understanding of how the game had developed in the borough, whilst a call out for local women and girls to share their stories provided us with the source material from which our heritage projects developed.

We translated this material via a series of creative heritage programmes including temporary exhibitions, contemporary collecting events at the fan parties and projects such as A Place At The Table and Around The Match.

The programme has already increased our existing collection with more coming forward. The material collected to date includes a range of oral histories, memorabilia, photographs, news articles, programmes, alongside the output of the creative heritage projects such as the new kit, pin badge and programme developed for the Around The Match.

What kind of online content did you select for the UK Web Archive collection?

With our content selection we wanted to try and capture the breadth of the heritage programme in the borough as it has been an incredibly rich experience to celebrate the amazing stories of our women and girls that play and love the game. This includes:

  • Event pages from cultural sites.
  • Project websites
  • Online newspapers

What websites are important for telling the story of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in your area?

The Visit Wigan web page encapsulate the breadth of opportunity the tournament afforded locally to celebrate elite women’s sport and be inspired to participate.

The Around The Match web page tell the story of 11 women and girls brought together to form a new team. Their individual passions and stories beautifully expressed in a wonderful film on the site that also has details of the contemporary memorabilia created to mark the tournament in the borough. The memorabilia is currently for sale, with 100% of the proceeds going to support the grass roots game locally as a lasting legacy.

The A Place At The Table web page follows the history of women’s football both locally and in context to the national and international game. Each table from the project focuses on a point in history that highlights the place of women in football, as well the parallels with the development of rights for women and wider society at the time.

The archived versions of these web pages can be found in the Cultural Programme subsection of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection on the UK Web Archive website.

Get Involved

Browse through the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 and let us know if there is any UK published content that should be added to the collection. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nominations form: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

 

26 July 2022

Web archiving the UEFA Women’s Euros in Sheffield

By Dr Justine Reilly, Strategic Director, Sporting Heritage

Four different photos of handmade football flags. There are six flags in total. The image is from a partnership event Sporting Heritage hosted with Sheffield Museums. The event was held on Monday 25 July 2022 at the Museum. There were four different sessions where children came together to make football flags.

Introduction
The Heritage Fund awarded £500,000 to a programme which is recording the hidden history of women’s football and has launched a celebration of the game, its players, and communities in partnership with the UEFA Women’s EUROs.

Alongside this programme, the UK Web Archive is archiving UK-published websites about the tournament. In this guest blog post, we hear from Dr Justine Reilly from Sporting Heritage who supported host city Sheffield, with their contribution to the collection.

Sporting Heritage
Sporting Heritage is a UK wide organisation who work to support the preservation, collection, access, celebration of the sporting past. Whether that be objects and archives, photographs and videos, oral histories or song and chants, our role is to support all those who have a sporting story. We deliver a range of activities and events for example training events, National Sporting Heritage Day, and the Sporting Heritage Awards.

What did you collect for your museum/archive while working on this project?
We supported the host city of Sheffield by developing a number of different programmes including:

How did you collect your archive material?
We reached out to local sports clubs and organisations with links to football across Sheffield to inform both our exhibition and our wider activity. This included a social media campaign to draw in voices which have previously been ignored and hidden in the story of women’s football in Sheffield.

We continue to capture new stories via our web pages, and worked closely with partner organisations such as Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD) and academic researchers Dr Fiona Skillen and Dr Gary James to inform our programming. Our aim was to draw on online content, cross reference historical facts, and hear from lived experience voices which may not have been part of the historical record previously. 

What websites are important for telling the story of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in your area?
The overarching web pages linking to our heritage content around the Women’s Euro in Sheffield:

https://www.sportingheritage.org.uk/content/category/what-we-do/projects/uefa-womens-euros-22

The linked pages hosted by the City of Sheffield:

https://www.welcometosheffield.co.uk/visit/uefa-women-s-euro-2022/

And FURD pages outlining their work on the physical exhibition plinths and supporting activity:

https://furd.org/news/hidden-history-of-sheffield-womens-football-revealed-in-new-exhibitions

The archived versions of these web pages can be found in the Cultural Programme subsection of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection on the UK Web Archive website.

Get Involved
Browse through the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection and let us know if there is any UK published content that should be added? Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games

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

a screenshot of the Commonwealth Games logo used in an article by Sport England on their website. The article was archived by the UK Web Archive on 4/20/2022, 4:44:51 AM. You can view the article here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20220420034451/https://www.sportengland.org/campaigns-and-our-work/birmingham-2022-commonwealth-games]

Introduction
The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are taking place from July 28th to August 8th. There is also an extensive cultural programme running alongside the event till the end of September 2022.

The first Commonwealth Games was held in 1930 and the 2022 event is the twenty second edition of the competition. This is the sixth time that Britain has hosted the Commonwealth Games, Scotland have hosted it three times and including Birmingham 2022, England has hosted it three times. However, this is the second time that Britain has hosted this event since the formation of the UK Web Archive in 2005. 

Sport collecting in the web archive
In late 2017, the UK Web Archive started to formally curate sports websites by establishing three main collections on sport. They are the
Sports Collection, Sports: Football and Sports: International Events. The final collection in this series is Sports: International Events, documents major sporting events mostly hosted in the UK. It is in this collection that the Commonwealth Games Glasgow 2014 and the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 collections sit.

You can view the Glasgow 2014 collection here:  https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/22 

You can view the Birmingham 2022 collection here: www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4228

The Birmingham 2022 collection overview
We’ve broken this collection down into six areas:

  • Competitors: Athletes' websites and social media collected during the Games
  • Cultural Programme: Any websites and social media accounts related to the cultural programme during the Games
  • Organisational Bodies/Venues: UK national Commonwealth Games bodies' sites, local government sites etc.
  • Press Media and Comment: News and comment, including the Commonwealth games, interest groups and others
  • Sponsors: UK Websites and news articles relating to some of the official sponsors of the Games
  • Sports: The Sports subsection has twenty subsections, all governing body websites and club websites related to these sports and the Commonwealth Games will be tagged under their relevant sport

Get involved 
The UK Web Archive works across the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and with other external partners to try and bridge gaps in our subject expertise. But we can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 are preserved for future generations.

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

14 July 2022

Web Archiving the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in Northern Ireland

By Rosita Murchan, Web Archivist, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)

Black and white photo of Female footballer in a black and white striped shirt in motion of keeping up the ball
Thanks to the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Association for the photo

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) is the official archive of Northern Ireland and is situated in the historic Titanic Quarter in Belfast. PRONI was established by the Public Records Act (Northern Ireland) in 1923 which means in June next year we look forward to celebrating our centenary. PRONI has been collecting websites for over ten years, focusing on Government departments, local councils and websites deemed historically or culturally important to Northern Ireland. Over the years our collection has grown in both size and scope and we now capture one terabyte of data per year. PRONI does not have legal deposit status, so working with the UK Web Archive enables us to widen the scope of our collections, and ensure that other relevant content is captured.

PRONI has a rich history of celebrating women in sport having previously curated ‘A Level Playing field – Women in sport’ an exhibition from the archives held by PRONI. With images from the late nineteenth century onwards, this exhibition reminds us that women actually have a long history of participation in a wide range of sporting activities. PRONI also holds the papers of the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Association which includes official minutes and documents, as well as scrapbooks, programmes, newspaper clippings and other ephemera (PRONI Reference: D4633).

We are delighted to be working in partnership once again with the British Library and adding a Northern Irish perspective to their UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection.

The Northern Ireland team has defied the odds to book their place in this summer’s tournament, and PRONI’s collaboration with the British Library will enable us to capture web content documenting the progress of the players who are set to make history for Northern Ireland this summer.

We plan to select as much of the news and media coverage as we can, capturing the local views, hype and excitement of Northern Ireland’s historic qualification to the Euros as well as content from Northern Ireland women’s official home page within the IFA (NI Women's Football) detailing all fixtures, news, team profiles and updates throughout the tournament. We will also include social media content about the tournament, twitter feeds of organisations and team members, and general social media coverage of the competition.

In recent years, PRONI has developed a number of creative and digital engagement projects that put the public at the heart of archives, making archives more welcoming and inclusive. We plan to use our social media channels to put out a call for nominations for sites from PRONI followers but anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nominations form: www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate

PRONI Logo white background

05 July 2022

What to expect on the UK Web Archive blog during UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022

By Helena Byrne, Curator of Web Archives, British Library

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 UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 from around the UK

You can view the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection here:  https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4278

a blue banner image with the British Library, Inspired by England 2022, the National Football Museum and the UK Web Archive. 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 QR code and link to the nomination form: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

Over the next few weeks there will be a number of guest blog posts from the UK Web Archive and collaborators from around the UK. 

First up, we will have a blog post from the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales. Neither Scotland nor Wales qualified for this edition of the tournament, but as part of the UK Web Archive, both national libraries will be contributing to the collection and ensuring that any fan events taking place are preserved. 

From the 18th July there will be a number of blog posts published each week in July.  There will be a guest blog post from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) who will be contributing a range of content from Northern Ireland. The team from Northern Ireland made history by qualifying for their first UEFA Women’s Euro tournament. 

There will be a series of blog posts from the tournament’s Arts and Heritage partners in the host cities. There were three specially commissioned projects to celebrate the rich history of women’s football and its players and to encourage more people to be inspired by the tournament. These blog posts will also include updates from across the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 host cities. These blog posts will give a summary of their local cultural programme activities, as well as an overview of what websites they nominated to the collection that are important for telling the story of the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 tournament in their area.

The final blog post in the series will be published in late September, this will be a reflection on the collection activities and give an overview of some personal favourites from the curator of the web archive collection, Helena Byrne. 

Get involved 
Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our nomination form: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate 

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.

30 May 2022

What UKWA did at the IIPC Web Archive Conference 2022

By Jason Webber, Engagement Manager, The British Library

Between the 18 and 25 May 2022, we had the biggest annual event in the world of web archiving - The IIPC General Assembly and Web Archive Conference. Some of the sessions were for members only but many were free and open for anyone to attend.

IIPC conference banner

Here are the UKWA staff and research partners who gave presentations at the conference with links to their pre-recorded talks that have been uploaded to our YouTube channel.

 

 

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