Web Archiving Group
The Web Archiving Working Group was originally established October 2011 by the Content Interest Group. The Web Archiving Survey produced reports in 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2023. All reports can be found on the NDSA OSF page.
2026 Scope of Work and Products
The Web Archiving Survey Working Group plans to conduct a survey of organizations that are actively involved in, or interested in starting, programs to archive content from the Web; this survey will be the second to include international responses. “2026 Web Archiving Survey Results” will build upon the previous iterations of the web archiving surveys published in 2023, 2017, 2016, 2013, and 2011 to provide long-term analysis and further reflect upon changes in the field.
Since the last working group formed, there have been substantial changes in web archiving practices, tools, and public engagement. Archive-It released ARCH software for computational datasets of web archives in 2022; Webrecorder released the Browsertrix platform to the public in 2024; and GovScape launched in 2025 as an online tool to search across PDF files in government websites collected in the 2020 End of Term Web Archive crawl.
The general public’s interest in saving websites has increased in no small part due to press coverage of changing political and technological landscapes. Multiple articles about web archiving were published in mainstream publications for general audiences, including Internet Archive Blogs, the New Yorker, the New York Times, BBC, and Forbes. Cultural heritage institutions around the world have experienced data breaches and DDOS attacks, yet, collaborative web archive collections have been made publicly available from organizations including the International Internet Preservation Consortium, IvyPlus Libraries Confederation, and the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) project.
2026 Working Group Members
- Elana Colon-Marrero, Co-chair, University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library
- Melissa Wertheimer, Co-chair, Library of Congress
The Web Archiving Survey Working Group call for volunteers is officially open.
Contact Us
If you have any questions please contact the Co-Chairs, Melissa Wertheimer (mwer [at] loc [dot] gov) and Elena Colón-Marrero (emcolonm [at] umich [dot] edu).