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

4 posts categorized "Women's histories"

30 September 2022

Celebrating Sporting Heritage Day 2022

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

NSHD-Facebook-Banner-Sport-Icons-2.jpg-564x339

This blog post gives an overview of our sports related activities for the year to celebrate Sporting Heritage Day 2022 

2022 has been, and continues to be, a really busy year for international sport especially in the UK. The Winter Olympics in Beijing and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham were  always scheduled to take place in 2022 years in advance. But as the Covid-19 pandemic caused disruption to many events in 2020 and 2021 many sporting events were postponed. The UEFA Women's Euros and the Rugby League World Cup, both hosted by England, were moved from 2021 to 2022, meaning that 2022 was even busier than normal in terms of major sporting events.

Sports has always been an Important part of the UK Web Archive so 2022 has been a busy year for us so far. Since 2017, sports has been grouped into three separate collections. 

Sports Collection - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/1768 

Sports: Football - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/1490 

Sports: International Events - https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2315 

The UK Web Archive regularly publishes blog posts about sport, which can be found here: https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/sports/

2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics

As members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) both the British Library and the National Library of Scotland contributed to the IIPC Content Development Group (CDG) 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics collection.

The Olympics took place in Beijing from 4 to 20 February 2022, while the Paralympics were also in Beijing from 4 to 13 March 2022. 

The collection archived 863 items which included whole websites, subsections or individual pages from websites. These items are from 38 countries and 24 different languages are represented in the collection. Topics covered both events on and off the sporting field.

Browse the collection here:

https://archive-it.org/collections/18422 

UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022

The UEFA Women's Euro 2022 competition took place across England from July 6 to July 31, 2022. Although the event is over we are still collecting websites about the Euros from around the UK till the end of October. 

This collection covers both the sporting and cultural achievements of the event. There are over 275 items in the UEFA Women’s Euro England 2022 collection.

So far we have published seven blog posts about the Women’s Euros and there are still more to come. They can be found on the UK Web Archive blog with the sports tag here:

https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/sports/ 

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

Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022

Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 ran from 28 July to 8 August. Although the sporting events are over the cultural programme is continuing for a number of weeks. This means that UKWA still has an open call for nominations for this collection.

The collection covers both the sporting and cultural achievements as well as the social impact of this mega event. So far there are 434 items in the Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022 collection.

Browse the collection here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/4228 

Rugby League World Cup 2021

The Rugby League World Cup 2021 will take place from 15 October to 19 November 2022 across England. 

This event is unique in that the men's, women's and wheelchair competition all take place alongside each other. You can nominate your UK published Rugby League World Cup content here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/nominate 

Updates on this collection will be published on the UK Web Archive blog and Twitter account

When published this collection will sit as a subsection of the Sports: International Events collection on the UKWA Topics & Themes page and will be available here: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2315 

Access to the collections 

All of the archived content in the IIPC CDG 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics collection is open access. CDG collaborative collections are archived using the Archive-It platform meaning that all archived content is open access, although a publisher may  request its removal under the Internet Archives’ general terms and conditions

All CDG collections can be viewed here: https://archive-it.org/home/IIPC 

UK Web Archive Content has a mix of on-site and remote access due to the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations implemented in 2013. The full manifest of  content selected for UK Web Archive collections is visible on the website but access to individual archived websites depends on permission being granted by website publishers.  A note under each title informs users whether they can view the archived website online or whether they need to visit a UK Legal Deposit Library to view the archived content. 

All curated collections can be found on the Topics and Themes page of the UK Web Archive website: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/category 

Get involved

The UK Web Archive is a partnership of the six UK legal Deposit Libraries and works with other external partners in order to expand  our subject expertise. We can’t curate the whole of the UK web on our own, however - we need your help to ensure that information, discussions and creative output related to sports is preserved for future generations.

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/nominate 

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

 

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 

23 February 2022

International Women’s Day 2022 - save your event ad now!

By Helena Byrne, Curator Web Archives, The British Library

8th March is International Women’s Day (IWD). Originally started in the trade union movement, IWD was an important day to highlight the inequalities women face and to campaign for equal rights. In recent years, IWD has had a wider remit and includes celebrating the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements as well as struggles of women.

British Library Votes for Women exhibition website

British Library, Votes for Women online exhibition webpages, archived 2018

Events of all kinds are held on 8th March or close to that date to mark the occasion. Most of these events are advertised online through websites, social media and in online event platforms like Eventbrite. A simple search on Eventbrite for International Women’s Day brings up 500 pages from around the world but mostly in the UK. A little over half of those events are advertised for London.

Are you attending or organising an IWD event this year that is advertised online? Nominate that website/online advert to the UK Web Archive by filling in our ‘Save a website’ form.

Glasgow Women's Library+

Glasgow Women's Library, archived 2008.

What is the UK Web Archive?
The UK Web Archive is a collaboration of the six UK legal deposit libraries working together to preserve websites for future generations. We archive websites published in the UK on a wide variety of subjects such as politics, sports, hobbies and social issues etc. and have over a hundred curated collections in the UK Web Archive.

On IWD 2022 you might be interested in browsing some of our collections related to women’s rights such as Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights (2020), Gender Equality (2018), Political Action & Communication (2015), and Women’s Issue (2005-2013).

We work with subject experts to curate our collections but also take nominations from the public so please nominate your IWD event ads or any other UK published content that you feel should be included in the UK Web Archive by filling in our ‘Save a website’ form.