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.

Contact Us

While the most recent survey work is complete, if you have any questions or are interested in working on the next iteration of this survey in a few years, please contact the NDSA at ndsa [dot] digipres [at] gmail [dot] com.

2022 Scope of Work and Products

The Web Archiving Survey Working Group conducted a survey of organizations, in the United States and internationally, actively involved in, or interested in starting, programs to archive content from the Web. The survey builds on the previous four iterations of the ‘Web Archiving in the United States’ surveys.

The Working Group acknowledged that there had been substantial changes in the field in the five years since the last NDSA Web Archiving Survey. These developments included but were not limited to: Archive-It gaining 250+ new partners; refined and upgraded tools including Archive-It’s Brozzler, Webrecorder’s ArchiveWeb.page, and Documenting the Now’s DocNow app; articles on web archiving published in mainstream publications like The Atlantic, The Columbia Journalism Review, MSNBC, NPR, and Nature; initiatives like Project Stand, Archiving the Black Web, and Ethics and Archiving the Web; and last but not least, the COVID-19 pandemic, which left librarians, archivists, and historians wondering how to best document new realities which were often or solely available online.

The 2022 Web Archiving Survey was based off of previous surveys to provide long-term analysis while also allowing further reflections upon changes in the field. Accounting for the growth of the web archiving field and its impact, the 2022 Working Group developed a survey guided by the following questions:

  • Why archive the web?
  • What do cultural heritage workers collect through web archiving tools?
  • What infrastructure do practitioners need to support web archiving efforts?
  • What does web archiving look like at different types of institutions in the United States and abroad?

The group produced the 2022 Web Archiving Survey Report.

2022 Working Group Members

  • Samantha Abrams, (Co-Chair)
  • Zakiya Collier, Documenting the Now, Shift Collective (Co-Chair)
  • Amy Wickner, University of Maryland Libraries
  • Elana Colon-Marrero, University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library
  • keondra bills freemyn, Project STAND, University of Maryland
  • Melissa Wertheimer, Library of Congress
  • Nick Krabbenhoeft, New York Public Library