Incorporate archived materials from the Wayback Machine into your collections with the Waybackfill Service
February 25th, 2021
by the Archive-It team
Archive-It empowers institutions to collect websites and digital materials from the current web and build collections that grow and evolve over time. With the Waybackfill Service, Archive-It partners can also include older versions of the websites they are archiving with content from the Wayback Machine, allowing them to seamlessly incorporate materials pre-dating their Archive-It collecting. Partners can then tie past, recent, and future materials into one collection.
For example, institutions like the Montana State Library have used the Waybackfill Service to include materials from more recent archives of their state’s agency websites alongside the versions preserved by the Internet Archive for years before they joined Archive-It. This allows Montana State Library to provide more extensive historical and contextual information to their patrons.
Montana Department of Tourism website in 2000 (left) and 2015 (right)
The service is primarily intended for institutions archiving their own web properties, but inclusion of archival copies of other websites or content may also be possible. Partners using the service will provide the targeted website URLs along with preferred time ranges. Archive-It staff will determine the amount of data available and provide a quote for integrating this material into an Archive-It collection. Cost is based on data size and is typically in the range of $500-$2000. Participating in Waybackfill service does not impact an existing partner’s Archive-It subscription data budget and most data is added to a collection within 90 days.
Contact us if you are interested in learning more about this service.