Panel Discussions

Panel 1: "What is worth saving? Selection and curation in Web Archiving"

Chair: Lori Donavan, Internet Archive

Whether you call it selection, collection development or curation, choosing what information is worth saving is increasingly difficult when faced with the deluge of content on the web. The three panelists, Geoff Harder, Tessa Fallon and Lori Donavan, will discuss their experiences with curating web archives and facilitate audience discussion about selection and collaboration in web archiving.

Panelists include:

Geoff Harder, the Digital Initiatives Coordinator at University of Alberta Libraries will discuss his institution's web archiving use cases - from web collection "rescue" operations to other curation and collection efforts, such as polar materials and western Canadiana. University of Alberta has also replaced some paper collections in favor of web archiving government documents, education curriculum materials, etc.

Tessa Fallon, Web Collection Curator at Columbia University will discuss the selection processes for their web archives, which include the Human Rights Web Archive and University Archives as well as developing collections for the Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library, the Burke Theological Library, and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.

Lori Donovan, Partner Specialist at the Internet Archive will discuss how the Internet Archive and Archive-It partners select web content that is worth saving, focusing specifically on collaborative web archiving and documenting "spontaneous events" from around the world, including the Jasmine Revolution and the Japan Earthquake.

 

Panel 2: Preserving Web Archives

Chair: Raju Buddharaju, National Library Board

The panel will focus on the ingest of web archives in a preservation repository (be it intended, under development or up and running). It would be structured around 3 axes:

• a dedicated repository for web archives or a common repository for all digital objects?

• data and metadata formats - what level of information do we really need? / What is feasible/manageable in terms of performances?

• costs and sustainability over the long term

Panelists include:

Sébastien Peyrard of the National Library of France,

Peter McKinney from the National Library of New Zealand,

Aaron Binns from Internet Archive, and

Paul Wu of the Nanyang Technological University.

 

Panel 3: Digital Preservation & Disaster Scenarios

Chair: José Borbinha IST/INESC-ID, Portugal

In scenarios of disasters (natural or human originated) digital information can be at the same time fragile and powerful. Disasters can disrupt or destroy infrastructures, including computing and communication, which when it comes to the digital world, might mean the loss of fundamental business, technical, scientific and memory information. But also the rapid access to information in the same scenarios can be invaluable for prompt and proper reactions to save life and property. This panel will discuss the potential relevant roles of the digital preservation community in such scenarios.

Panelists include:

Sugeo Shigemoto of Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba, Japan,

José Barateiro from LNEC - National Civil Engineering Laboratory, Portugal

Arif Shaon from STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab., UK, and

Seamus Ross of the University of Toronto, iSchool, Canada.