Web Archiving at Harvard Library

Librarians, archivists, and curators must continue to acquire the content that they have always collected physically. With blogs supplanting diaries, e-mail supplanting traditional correspondence, and HTML materials supplanting many forms of print collateral, collection managers have grown increasingly concerned about potential gaps in the documentation of our cultural heritage.

Harvard Library has participated in web archiving since 2009, when the public interface for Harvard's Web Archive Collection Service (WAX) launched. WAX began as a pilot project in July 2006, funded by the University's Library Digital Initiative (LDI) to address the management of web sites by collection managers for long-term archiving. It was the first LDI project specifically oriented toward preserving "born-digital" material. In 2018, WAX was decommisioned and all previously collected content was migrated to Archive-It.

Harvard Library is also a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC).