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

72 posts categorized "Contemporary Britain"

26 June 2023

LGBTQ+ Connections and Community

By Ash Green, CLIP LGBTQ+ Network, and Goldsmith University

The Marlborough Pub and Theatre
The Marlborough Pub and Theatre

I was browsing through the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection recently, and reminded myself that I had added The Marlborough Pub and Theatre to it when I first began co-curating the collection. As far as I can remember, it was one of the first sites I added to the archive. I wanted it in there because it had been an important part of my coming out around 2017. I had a personal connection to it, and I wanted there to be a record of the impact it had on me. I know future explorers of the UK Web Archive won’t know why that site is archived, but maybe they will stumble across this blog post in connection to it and understand its importance to at least one BTQ person – me.

So, why did I specifically want this site in there? Well, in 2017, when I was working out what support there was for me as a trans/gender non-conforming person, I discovered The Clare project, which is a Tran’s support group in Brighton. I went along to it, and afterwards we went to The Marlborough Theatre and Pub, which was a venue with a long history of support for the LGBTQ+ community. The pub was the sort of place where I didn’t know anyone, but just being there made me feel okay about who I was. It was the first time being in an LGBTQ+ venue had felt like that to me. And I realised that there were other people there who seemed to be on similar paths in their lives. It was a reassuring place, and it was a place where I learnt about how diverse the LGBTQ+ community was. I remember going to a queer cabaret there, and it was such an amazing, heart-warming, queer, eye-opening and fun night. The pub is still there – now called The Actors. I’m not a regular visitor, and if you mention my name in there, they won’t know who I am. But when I call in from time to time when I’m in Brighton, I still get that sense of belonging to a community even if I’m quietly sitting in a corner reading on my own. It is a place that re-energises me.

It got me wondering about other sites in the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection focused on artistic communities that may have had a similar impact on others in the same way that The Marly did on me.

So, for example, what joy did members of South Wales Gay Men's Chorus, Songbirds Choir, or True Colours LGBT Choir feel when they first sang with these choirs?

How excited were listeners when they heard a new track on LGBT Underground that stuck a strong emotional chord with them, and has stayed with them forever?

How did filmmakers feel when their first film appeared at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, LezDiff, or the Iris Prize? And who in the audience saw something for the first time at these film festivals that resonated strongly with them?

And what sense of connection and belonging did those in queer / LGBTQ+ art groups such as The Queer Dot, Sanctuary Queer Arts, Wise Thoughts, and VFD find within their arts communities?

And maybe there are LGBTQ+ people who attended Queen Jesus, Teatro do Mundo, or even The Marlborough theatre performances, who realised the voice on stage was talking directly to them, and they clearly understood its message in relation to who they are as an LGBTQ+ person.

I’m know I can’t possibly be the only LGBTQ+ person who feels a strong connection with a place or community like these. Maybe you have a story to share about one of the sites in the collection? Or maybe you have a site like one of these that you would like us to add. You can nominate sites for inclusion here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate

We can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own. We need your help to ensure that information, discussions, personal experiences and creative outputs related to the LGBTQ+ community are preserved for future generations. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in the above nominations form.

If you would like to explore any of the sites mentioned in this blog post, you can find them in the Arts, Literature, Music & Culture subsection of the LGBTQ+ Lives Online collection: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/3090

04 May 2023

Regal Reflections: Exploring a New UK Web Archive Collection on King Charles III

Nicola Bingham, Lead Curator of Web Archiving, British Library

It has been 70 years since a new monarch was crowned in the UK. As we bear witness to a new era of the British monarchy and reflect on its role within the UK, the UK Web Archive is recording and preserving this momentous occasion by capturing websites in a special collection about King Charles III. Work started in earnest on this collection on 8th September 2022 when the late Queen, Elizabeth II, passed away and Charles became King, however, it also forms part of a larger series of collections about the British monarchy in the early 21st Century, curated by staff in the UK Legal Deposit Libraries.

Through this series of special collections, we can trace how the Royal Family has adopted the internet to communicate more efficiently with their supporters, members of the public, and other stakeholders as well as to promote their charitable causes and connect with younger generations who are more likely to engage with social media. As well as ‘official’ information, the UK Web Archive is also capturing user-generated content from a wide range of publishers including the general public, as recorded in websites, blogs, and social media posts, much of which is not available through traditional historical records.

In building this collection we have several priorities. As with all our collecting activity, our mission is to save ephemeral digital content ensuring it is preserved for the historical record. A good illustration of this is that the official website of Charles, Prince of Wales, published in his former position as heir apparent, no longer exists on the internet and is only available in the web archive.

Screenshot of the archived website of the Prince of Wales. Image of the Prince walking in a garden

Archived copy of www.princeofwales.gov.uk/ in the UK Web Archive (21/06/2019) https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20190621085304/https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/

We hope that the collection can help to provide a more comprehensive understanding of King Charles III and his impact on society, by preserving a diverse range of viewpoints and perspectives. There is a huge groundswell of affection for the new King, and the Royal Family in general, and a great sense of celebration and optimism in the lead-up to the Coronation on 6th May, however, there is of course, opposition, skepticism, and criticism, all of which is reflected online. It is important to capture all sides of the conversation to provide a balanced view of the Royal Family and create a digital legacy that will be of interest to researchers to study, and future generations to appreciate.

Another of our aims is to represent different communities across the UK and Commonwealth in the UK Web Archive. The collection will reflect how towns, cities, and villages celebrate the Coronation. Many people will be holding street parties, such as the residents of Calderdale, West Yorkshire, where residents are encouraged to get together and make the Coronation Weekend a community celebration to remember.

Seal of King Charles III - red background and white seal

In Glasgow organisations and communities are encouraged to engage in various Coronation initiatives and events in order to create a positive lasting legacy. The Big Help Out, for example, is an opportunity to highlight the positive impact of volunteering. It is hoped that the extra bank holiday for the Coronation will be remembered as a day of donating time and skills to help charities, causes, and the vulnerable.

Along with street parties, other traditions surrounding significant royal events include the manufacture and purchase of souvenirs. This article on the V&A’s website, preserved in the UK Web Archive, shows a few examples of souvenirs from past events such as the 'Jubilee' biscuit tin made in 1887 for the Carlisle-based biscuit manufacturer Carr & Co., to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and the 'Coronation Coach' biscuit tin resembling the ornate coach used by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their Coronation Day on 11 December 1936. Of course, now that online shopping is ubiquitous any type of royal-themed memorabilia or amenity can be purchased, from the more traditional such as this mug from the National Archives shop to the more esoteric such as hiring a King Charles look-a-like.

One of the more peculiar aspects of the British monarchy is that special occasions are often associated with an official dish. Queen Elizabeth had
curried chicken for her Coronation, which was a relatively exotic choice in the Britain of the 1950s while King Charles has a ceremonial quiche (disappointingly not named Quiche l’Reign) which is intended for people to cook at home as part of the Coronation Big Lunch.

Tweet from the Prime Ministers twitter account discussing the upcoming coronation.

Image from UK Government Twitter showing Queen’s Coronation banquet UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) / Twitter (webarchive.org.uk)]

In conclusion, the UK Web Archive is a collection affording a unique opportunity to witness and record unfolding historical events. As a historical figure, Charles III and the events that occur during his reign will be of significant interest to researchers, scholars, and the general public. Please do visit the King Charles III collection in the UK Web Archive, and if you know of a website that should be included in this collection, please nominate it here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/info/nominate

 

12 January 2023

Changes in Nature’s Calendar – Early Bloomers

The Importance of Citizen Science in Monitoring and Adapting to Climatic Change

By Andrea Deri, Cataloguer and UKWA Climate Change Collection’s lead curator

On 1 January 2023, I had my usual walk from Folkestone Gardens via Sue Godfrey Nature Park, Deptford, London Borough of Lewisham to Greenwich Park, Royal Borough of Greenwich. Overcast, temperature in single digit, humid but calm. Trees and shrubs mostly leafless: an accentuating background to patches of bright green mosses.

I was hoping to see some flowers on winter blossoming plants, for example the bell-shaped flowers of clematis ‘Jingle Bell’ in St Alfege Church’s yard, and the spidery flowers of witch hazels in the Royal Observatory Garden in Greenwich. I was also curious what other flowers I would find, earlier than usual, triggered by the warming climate. Having joined a month ago (1 December 2022) the annual wildflower ‘hunt’ on the first day of the winter, a survey of species in flower in my locality, Deptford’s urban area since 2009 organised by the Creekside Education Trust and the London Natural History Society, I expected several early bloomers. Here is Creekside’s blog post of the 2021 wildflower survey. 

While the witch hazels (Fig. 1.) did not disappoint, I was up for a surprise with clematis “Jingle Bell”: only the silky fluffy seedheads were left: it finished flowering earlier this year. I was lucky to see its last flowers on Christmas Eve 2022 (Fig. 2.). Other early flowers greeted me on a hazelnut shrub in Sue Godfrey Nature Park (Fig. 3.). But, I was truly astonished to see daffodils fully opened in a park by Creekside, just across the Creekside Discovery Centre (Fig.4.) 

Witch hazel flower

Figure 1 Witch hazel (Hamamelis sp.) in flower. Photo: Andrea Deri, Royal Observatory Garden, Greenwich, London, 1 January 2023

I started searching for phenology calendars, almanacs, and any information on the blooming time of these species in my local and other areas in order to compare my observations with the “expected” (based on previous years) flowering periods. The online findings supported my assumption: I did observe earlier than expected flowerings, with the most specific data for the hazelnut.

Clematis ‘Jingle Bell’ 
According to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) clematis “Jingle Bell” flowers in winter and early spring. Compared to this broad-brush period, my observation this year suggests this individual specimen finished flowering much earlier than expected and earlier than I had observed this specimen in previous years. 

Clematis flower

Figure 2 Clematis cirrhosa “Jingle Bells” one bell-shaped flower and fluffy seedheads. Photo: Andrea Deri, St Elfege Church, Greenwich, London, 24 December 2022

Daffodil 
A post on the Daffodil Society prompted me to do a search on RHS’s website for daffodils where February-March was quoted as the usual flowering period. More precise than for the clematis. Early flowering daffodil horticultural varieties, however, can bloom as early as January, stated one of the Gardeners World blogposts. I may have encountered an early flowering daffodil garden variety. In addition to its literary associations, this iconic flower may have just now become also a conversation starter about the climate crisis. Would its freshness and brightness frame a difficult dialogue in hope? 

Daffodil flowers

Figure 3 Daffodils (Narcissus sp.) in flower. Photo: Andrea Deri, near Creekside Discovery Centre, Deptford, London, 1 January 2023

Hazelnut 
The Woodland Trust Nature’s Calendar offered me with the tool I had been really looking for: a peer-reviewed database linked to a live map that allowed me to compare my observation with fellow observers in the UK at day level precision.  

Hazelnut flower

Figure 4 Hazelnut (Corylus avellana) in flower: crimson female flowers, yellow catkin male flowers. Photo: Andrea Deri, Sue Godfrey Nature Park, Deptford, London, 1 January 2023

Before I signed up to add my hazelnut observation, I took a screenshot of the “Add a Record” webpage on 5 January 2023 that showed the first hazelnut flower sighting on 4 January 2023. (Fig.5.)

Screenshot of Wildlife trust 'Nature's calendar' website

Figure 5 Screenshot of Nature's Calendar, Woodland Trust. Photo: Andrea Deri, @20:34 pm GMT 5 January 2023

Hazelnut first flowering was among the recently recorded data of the Nature’s Calendar (Fig. 5.) My observation of hazelnut flowers on 1 January 2023 was not extraordinary but earlier than the one featured online. Hazelnut is expected to be in flower in early January according to Nature Calendar (downloadable pdf). But as early as 1 January? To answer this question, I had to register to enter my data. When I entered my observation date, I received an automatic note, all in red: 

This date falls outside of the expected range

The date you have entered is unusually early or late for this species and event; please double check the record. If it’s correct we’d like to know more about your observation, so please add a comment before clicking ‘next’ to continue. If possible, a photo is very useful too. Please note that your record will not appear on the live map until it has been checked by the Nature’s Calendar team.”

For evidence, I uploaded one of my photos of the hazelnut flowers (Fig.4.) and a description of the place and circumstances. My hazelnut flowering observations may turn out to be some of the earliest this year. To prove or refute this statement I rely on the Woodland Trust’s online database, the Nature’s Calendar team’s peer-review and keen monitoring of fellow citizen scientists. This type of on-land & online live collaboration in monitoring the slightest phenological changes is gaining increasing importance in addressing local impacts of climatic changes.

Will hazelnut flower earlier and earlier in the future? Only regular visitors can answer this question by careful monitoring the same hazelnut shrub and recording the date of the first flowers and uploading the data to Nature Calendar.

Nature Calendar invites citizen scientists to monitor a carefully selected list of species of shrubs, trees, flowers, grasses, fungi, birds, insects and amphibians throughout the year. Their changes over time will give us information on how these species (plants, animals and mushroom) adapt to the unfolding climatic changes. Phenological change data contributes to better decisions in wildlife conservation, among others.  

While I was browsing, I came across several websites and webpages on various other decisions and local actions related to climate change adaptation. For example: What can I do about climate change in my garden?  What local residents are doing in the boroughs of Lewisham and Greenwich about the climate crisis:  Climate Action Lewisham, Climate Home – a home of creativity, imagination and community activism by young people, Lewisham Climate Action Bond as an example of Local Climate Bonds, Lewisham Climate Emergency Declaration and Action Plan, CAPE Informing Local Action on Climate Change / London Borough of Lewisham, The Climate Emergency website of Royal Borough of Greenwich, Carbon Neutral Greenwich, Greenwich Climate Network. 

Some of the activities and organisations were familiar to me, I was taken aback by others: ‘How could I miss them?  I live here!” A fast-changing landscape of actions and online information. Having saved these sites to my further actions, I also realised some of these online contents could be highly ephemeral. Uploading my list of URLs to the UKWA Climate Change collection saved local digital content for future research on climatic changes.  

Sauntering through streets, gardens and parks has turned into an archival journey, connecting past, present and future. Fit for the first day of the year. Fit for any days, anywhere where your interest, experience, and local knowledge crosses climatic changes.  

The Natural History Museum’s community science webpage lists a broad range of UK wildlife monitoring activities related to climatic changes, including the New Year Plant Hunt of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and the upcoming annual Big Garden Birdwatch (27-28 January 2023) organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds since 1979. 

Contribute to the web archive
Your next walk or online stroll may spark you to nominate some of your local climate initiatives (civil society, governmental, business, media, arts and academia) to the UK Web Archive Climate Change Collection. Many thanks for your consideration. 

12 December 2022

Examining sports history through digitised & born digital resources

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

The Irish Sporting Lives workshop and symposium took place at the Ulster University campus in Belfast from 11-12 November 2022. Day one took the form of a half day workshop aimed at  PhD/ECR researchers. It focused both on imparting knowledge about how to research historical figures and how to write sporting biographies. There were three sessions in the workshop:

  1. Margaret Roberts: It’s not what you research… it’s the way that you research it: that’s what gets results
  2. Helena Byrne: Examining sports history through digitised and born digital resources
  3. Turlough O’Riordan & Terry Clavin: Writing sporting lives

The slide deck and speaker notes on ‘Examining sports history through digitised and born digital resources’ are now available in the British Library Shared Research Repository under a CC BY 4.0 Attribution licence. 

The running time for this session was 70 minutes, therefore, many of the slides were discussed only briefly to allow more time for the activity phase of the workshop. The slides accompanying the notes can be edited by anyone to suit different session lengths. If more time is available, more time can be spent on exploring the different options discussed in the slides. As there was limited time in this workshop, no live demos were given during the presentation. The workshop focused on the subject of sport, but it could be adapted to suit any subject area. 

For more general web archiving training materials at a beginner level, please see the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Training Materials page: https://netpreserve.org/web-archiving/training-materials/  

The agenda for this session covered: 

  • Warm Up Activity
  • Digital Resources
  • Digitised Newspapers
  • Web Archives
  • Hackathon – Preserve Irish sporting heritage online. 
  • Wrap Up Activity

The session mostly focused on using web archives and only briefly covered digitised newspapers because this was covered in more depth in the first session led by Margaret Roberts.

What sport(s) do you study - word cloud

The warm-up activity collected anonymous information on what type of academic background the workshop participants were from, what their general level of awareness of web archives were, and in particular their awareness of the UK Web Archive. Participation in this activity was optional and not all participants responded to every question. Most of the participants came from a history background while others were from subjects including English Literature, Law, Sports Management or Independent Researchers who research a wide variety of sports. 

There were twelve responses to the question ‘Do you understand the difference between the terms digitised and born digital?’. Six respondents replied ‘yes’, while three said ‘no’ and three said ‘not sure’. In the ‘Digital Resources’ section of the presentation, the difference between these two terms was clarified during the presentation. More in depth user studies on web archive research conducted by Healy et. al. (2022) and Costea (2018) have highlighted that there is often confusion amongst researchers on the difference between a digital library/digital archive, a database and a web archive.

There were thirteen responses to the question ‘Have you ever used a web archive?’. Six respondents replied 'yes', while four said ’no’ and three said ‘not sure’. There were twelve responses to the question ‘Have you ever used the UK Web Archive?’. Four respondents replied ‘yes’, while six said ‘no’ and two said ‘not sure’.

DIY Web Archiving Strategies - logos of several web archiving companies

The session highlighted different ways that the researchers could use DIY web archiving techniques to mitigate against the impact link rot and content drift could have on their research. 

In the hackathon part of the session, participants were tasked to use some of the DIY web archiving strategies discussed to preserve the Irish sporting heritage. Participants could choose from  two options: 

  1. Add online content used in your research to the relevant web archives. 
  2. Review what web content has already been preserved from your area of study in the UK Web Archive Sports Collections. Then select online content from the web to nominate to the UK Web Archive.

Although there was approximately 25 minutes available at the end of this presentation for this activity, it would really need more time and if possible pre-workshop preparation to get maximum results for this activity. 

To wrap up this session, participants were asked two questions about how likely they were to use web archives in their research. Firstly, on a scale of 1 meaning very unlikely to 5 very likely, participants were asked ‘How likely are you to use a web archive as a resource for your research?’. Seven participants answered this question and the aggregated response was 4.4. Secondly, eight participants responded to the question ‘How likely are you to save content you view online in a web archive?’. This was also a scale question with 1 meaning very unlikely to 5 very likely, and the aggregated response was 3.4. 

Although the workshop elicited a small sample of results, they show that there is an interest in using web archives in academic research, not just as a reference source but as a way for managing online citations in the field of sports studies. It would be beneficial to the research community if those teaching research method classes could incorporate web archive training into their classes. The training materials published through the British Library Shared Research Repository can be adapted to suit any subject area.

References:

Healy, S., Byrne, H., Schmid, K., Bingham, N., Holownia, O., Kurzmeier, M., & Jansma, R. (2022). Skills, Tools, and Knowledge Ecologies in Web Archive Research. WARCnet Special Report. Aarhus, Denmark: WARCnet, https://cc.au.dk/fileadmin/dac/Projekter/WARCnet/Healy_et_al_Skills_Tools_and_Knowledge_Ecologies.pdf    

Costea, M.-D. (2018). Report on the Scholarly Use of Web Archives. Aarhus, Denmark: NetLab. Retrieved 2019-08-30, from http://netlab.dk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Costea_Report_on_the_Scholarly_Use_of_Web_Archives.pdf   

07 December 2022

Pride and Visibility in the LGBTQ+ Lives Online Collection

By Ash Green, CLIP LGBTQ+ Network, and Goldsmith University

The LGBTQ+ Lives Online UK Web Archive collection currently holds over 600 sites, web pages, blogs etc focused on the LGBTQ+ experience of people in the UK. Community and the coming together of individuals is a key aspect of the LGBTQ+ experience, and this is particularly reflected in sites acting as networks; focused on Pride events; and visibility and remembrance days such as Bi Visibility Day, Lesbian Visibility Week, Trans Day of Remembrance, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. These events, networks and days are there to support the community; remind others outside the community we are part of, that we exist; that we celebrate who we are; that the need to highlight and address inequalities continues to remain important despite LGBTQ+ people having existed for millennia.

Pride march with rainbow flags
Gotta Be Worth It from Pexels

An example of sites in the UK Web Archive under some of these banners include: LGBT Mummies (aiming to support LGBT+ women & people globally on the path to motherhood or parenthood); London Gaymers (a safe place for the LGBT gaming community in London and across the UK to connect with like minded individuals); African Rainbow Family (a non-for-profit charitable organisation that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender intersexual and queer (LGBTIQ) people of African heritage and the wider Black Asian Minority Ethnic groups); Pride Sports (a focus on increasing participation in sport by lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people as well as the wider community). As you can see from the examples given, many of the informal networks are focused on where other aspects of an individual’s life overlaps with being an LGBTQ+ person.

We also have Pride sites archived within the collection, including both local (Pride In Surrey , Glasgow’s Mardi Gla , York Pride) and nationwide (LGBTQYMRU ) events. Before the pandemic they were mainly face-to-face events, but between 2020 and 2022, there was an increase in online events as many sought to keep LGBTQ+ people connected in a safe way.

We would like to build the collection of UK sites focused around Pride and awareness/visibility days. We don’t limit our collection of sites to big organisations only – as we have said before, all LGBTQ+ content is welcome, including personal content if it is published in the UK. And even though we would like to develop the areas of the collection highlighted above, we are also still happy to receive submissions around any aspects of LGBTQ+ Lives Online. So, if you know of any online content you think we should be archiving within this collection please nominate it here.

Under the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013, the UKWA can archive UK published websites, but are only able to make the archived version available to people outside the Legal Deposit Libraries Reading Rooms, if the website owner has given permission. The UK Legal Deposit Libraries are the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Libraries and Trinity College Dublin Library. If you’re curious about what is in the LGBTQ+ collection you can browse through it here.

01 December 2022

History on the move: Curating a collection on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

By Daniela Major, PhD Student, School of Advanced Studies, University of London

Note: This blog post was written before the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Jubilee collection has documented the end of an extraordinary reign and will hopefully serve as a basis for future researchers to understand this historical moment.

Before I started my placement at the UK Web Archive, my project idea was to build a collection about the History of London. I had thought it would give me an opportunity to delve into history blogs and history websites, and to explore how people interpret historical events; it was, however, a Jubilee year, and the opportunity came up instead to curate a collection about this very modern event, which would, moreover, unfold as I built the collection.

Queen's Platinum Jubilee 2022 logo in english and welsh

The particular challenges of this exercise were very attractive to someone who still considers herself an historian. It is fairly straightforward to build a collection about events that have gone past and that have been analysed by countless historians. It is a very different thing to curate a collection about events that are happening, whose consequences remain unknown. In this sense, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee was a great opportunity because in many ways Queen Elizabeth II already belongs to History. It is entirely possible to historicise her existence and her years in power. It is also possible to use her reign as a way to look into the making of modern Britain and modern Europe, as she was present through many key historical moments in the last 70 years.

A priority which was defined early on was representing different parts of the UK, rather than focusing only on the big cities. We looked into how towns, villages and cities were celebrating the Jubilee, what events they were organizing, where street parties would take place and how councils involved local communities in the celebrations. From a geographical representation came the necessity to represent different voices and opinions, both from the UK and the Commonwealth. It was vital the collection didn’t turn out to be laudatory. Future researchers would be interested in knowing whether there was resistance to the monarchy and whether consensus was real or fabricated.

As with so many questions in History, the answer is both yes and yes. Yes, there is resistance, but yes there is genuine and even widespread appreciation for the Queen.

For the majority of my academic career, I have looked to the past to study it. Historians are used to question the archives. We have to question the silences and the omissions, we have to remember who created records, who kept them, and why. Curating this collection placed me firmly on the other side of these interrogations. I was the one deciding what should go into the collection, what should be kept for posterity. The web is vast, content is being produced every minute of every hour. It is not conceivable to include everything. The responsibility is enormous, but it made me all the more aware of the need to hear different sides, so as to not exclude voices which have often been silenced in the past.

The Web affords researchers the possibility to glimpse into facets of life and points of view that many previous historical records have omitted. It is a rich source with enormous democratic potential, and one which will become even more essential in the years to come; it must be protected and looked after. The work that web archivists do, and that I have been privileged enough to take part in, is vital to safeguard the history of the present and the future.

View the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, 2022 collection

Also the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, 2012 collection 

Queen's platinum jubilee collection screenshot

07 October 2022

The UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 Arts and Heritage Programme

by Caterina Loriggio, UEFA Women’s EURO Arts and Heritage Lead

Jan Lyons (Manchester Corinthians) and Gail Redston (Manchester City) looking at the 1921 Ban. Part of Trafford's heritage programme. Photo by Rachel Adams for UEFA WEURO 2022 heritage programme
Jan Lyons (Manchester Corinthians) and Gail Redston (Manchester City) looking at the 1921 Ban. Part of Trafford's heritage programme. Photo by Rachel Adams for UEFA WEURO 2022 heritage programme

The UK Web Archive has been collaborating with the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 Arts and Heritage Programme to develop the UEFA Women's Euro England 2022 web archive collection. In this guest blog post, we hear about the wider arts and heritage programme around the tournament from Caterina Loriggio.

The UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 arts and heritage programme was designed to promote community engagement, develop cultural leadership, support health and wellbeing, reinforce civic pride and to support local economies post-pandemic. Host City partners (Rotherham, Sheffield, Trafford, Wigan, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Brent, Hounslow, Brighton, and Southampton) were all keen to amplify the opportunity the tournament provided to engage and inspire their residents and visitors.

The £3m programme was supported by National Lottery players through Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund grants and through funding from the Host Cities. It included four arts commissions, eight museum/archive exhibitions, eight outdoor exhibitions, heritage outreach and education programmes, 45 memory films and new online content covering the history of the women’s game. The project also researched for the first time the full line-up of all the women who have played for England over the past 50 years. Many of those women will be honoured at Wembley Stadium on October 7th in front of a sell-out crowd when they will take a lap of honour during half time in the England USA match.

It was the first time The FA had ever delivered a cultural programme. A key priority for The FA is to establish female role models for both girls and boys. When Host City partners requested a cultural programme to support the tournament the Association saw that this could be a great opportunity to further fulfil this objective. It was also clear that partnering with cultural organisations in Hosts Cities, and national institutions such as the UK Web Archive and British Library would also be a great way to promote the UK’s cultural sector and would be a very effective tool to capture, for the first time on a national scale, the hidden history of women’s football.

Prior to writing funding applications, I led, with the support of the Football Supporters’ Association, four online fan consultations to ensure the programme spoke to the wants of women’s football fans. We also commissioned the organisation ‘64 Million Artists’ to lead half-term virtual workshops for young people aged 12 – 18 in Host Cities (many of whom played football). The fans and young people’s feedback was shared with artists, archivists and curators and was clearly reflected in all elements of the programme. The fans were clear that they could ‘never get enough history’.

Archives and contemporary collecting played an important part in the heritage programme. It was apparent many stories of women’s football (fans as well as players) had been lost already and that women who had played during the ban (1921-1970) were of an age that if we did not collect their stories now, then there was a real risk that they might never be captured. As well as collecting physical objects for museums and archives like caps, pennants, and programmes, there was a significant degree of online archiving. Many of the Host Cities created online exhibitions, hosted films, and imagery on digital archive platforms and digitally captured objects which retired footballers were happy to loan but not donate. Nationally we made 36 memory films live on The FA website. These will be moved to EnglandFootball.com in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Lionesses in November, plus there will be some new content made especially for the anniversary. We were greatly supported in our programme by The National Football Museum and Getty Images who gave us access to their photography archives, which greatly enriched all our work. We also sought to create content for the future by commissioning Getty photographers and by running fan and young people’s photography campaigns to capture the atmosphere of match day and the fan experience beyond the pitch. Some of these images will be shared in an online Getty Images Gallery to be launched in November.

It is hoped that the learnings from this programme will help to secure cultural content in future UK bids for major sporting events. I hope that archiving and collecting will remain important components in all these future projects.

Related Links
This is the ninth blog post published so far about the women’s Euros, the others can be found on the UK Web Archive blog under the 'sports' tag.

There is still an active call for nominations for the UEFA Women's Euro England 2022 web archive collection. Anyone can suggest UK published websites to be included in the archive by filling in our nomination form.

06 October 2022

WARCnet Special Report: Skills, Tools and Knowledge Ecologies in Web Archive Research, 2022

by Sharon Healy, Maynooth University (Project Lead)

WARST report image - skills, tools and knowledge ecologies in web archive research

The WARST team are delighted to announce the publication of a WARCnet Special Report, titled: Skills, Tools and Knowledge Ecologies in Web Archive Research. This study is part of a collaborative project by researchers from Maynooth University, the British Library, the International Internet Preservation Consortium, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and the University of Siegen. The research team are all members of Web ARChive studies network researching web domains and events (WARCnet).

The study focuses on individuals around the globe who participate in web archive research, in the context of web archiving, curation, and the use of web archives and archived web content for research or other purposes. We consider web archive research to be representative of the processes and activities described in Archive-It’s web archiving life cycle model from appraisal, acquisition, and preservation, to replay, access, use and reuse (Bragg & Hannah, 2013).

The methodology for the study entailed desk research, participation in WARCnet meeting discussions, and an online questionnaire. The study sought to identify and document the skills, tools, and knowledge required to achieve a broad range of goals within the web archiving life cycle and to explore the challenges for participation in web archive research, and the interludes of such challenges across communities of practice. We suggest that there is a perpetual need to examine the roles of skills, tools, and methods associated with the web archiving life cycle as long as internet, web and software technologies keep advancing, upgrading, and changing.

The Executive summary offers an overview of the findings, and is translated into Danish, French, Spanish and Catalan.

The Report is available to download from WARCnet website:

https://cc.au.dk/fileadmin/dac/Projekter/WARCnet/Healy_et_al_Skills_Tools_and_Knowledge_Ecologies.pdf

A section of the Report that focused on the software, tools and methods used in the web archive research life cycle was presented in a poster at iPres 2022.

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