Catch up with web archiving presentations from Portland
August 23rd, 2017
By Karl-Rainer Blumenthal
About sixty(!) Archive-It partners and their peers gathered in Portland last month ahead of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual conference to compare notes, share progress, and pose questions for the year to come in web archiving. Formal presentations, breakout discussions, and hallway conversations surveyed the broad landscape of web archiving use cases, partner types, and their respective challenges; from the mandates that shape collecting scopes to the technical developments that unlock future access and use possibilities. If you could not join us in person this year, or if you ever want to revisit something that you learned in the room, visit this page in Archive-It’s Help Center for all of the presenters’ materials as well as audio recordings of their talks. Thanks again to all of those who volunteered to stir the pot this year, and especially for recording your talks for your far-flung colleagues!
This Archive-It goes to 11: 2006-17
The 2017 Archive-It Partner Meeting marked our 11th year building collections together with our partners. Attendees and presentations reflected this maturity, with contributions coming from partners who joined in 2006, in 2017, and everywhere in between. New perspectives informed the breakout discussion over longstanding issues like descriptive practice, divisions of web archiving labor, and long term preservation. And, in a forward-looking conversation, partners broached the timely prospect of a coordinated, collaborative approach to web archiving climate change — look for a deeper dive into this topic and its next steps very soon!
These and many more conversations, projects, and developments will continue throughout the year. If they raise new questions or ideas, be sure to share them in the Community Forum. We look forward to another rich review of progress made in year 12 in Washington, D.C. Hope to see you there!