A lecture given at the Moore Institute at the National University of Ireland Galway. It lays out the case for archiving the web as a source for future scholarly enquiry; examines the state of play of web archiving in Ireland; outlines the broad use cases for the archived web; and presents results from research into creationism on the web in the UK and in Ireland.

1. A new class of primary source?
Prospects and pitfalls in using
web archives for research
Dr Peter Webster
Webster Research and Consulting
@pj_webster

3. A lost archive?

4. A lost archive?

5. A lost archive?

6. The web its own archive?
Open UK Web Archive 2004-13 comparison.
@anjacks0n http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/webarchive/2014/10/what-is-still-on-
the-web-after-10-years-of-archiving-.html

7. Disappearing predictably

8. Disappearing unpredictably

9. .. But safe and sound in the archive

10. Reasons to care about web
archiving
• education and research
• enforcement of the law
• public accountability

11. Three archives for the UK
Temporal scope Content scope Access
Open UKWA 2004-present Selective
(14.7k)
Online
Legal Deposit
UKWA
2013-present Comprehensive
(for UK)
Onsite
JISC UK
Domain Dataset
1996-2013 Comprehensive
(for .uk)
Index only

12. JISC UK Web Domain Dataset
(1996-2013)
• copy of Internet Archive holdings for .uk
• bought by JISC, held by British Library
• 60TB of data
• no direct access to content
• prototype search at webarchive.org.uk/shine
• derived datasets in public domain

13. Web archives for NI and RoI
Temporal scope Content scope Access
NLI Web
Archive
2011-present Selective (542) Online
PRONI Web
Archive
2010-present Selective (115) Online
Legal Deposit
UKWA
2013-present Comprehensive
(for UK!)
Onsite (TCD)

14. Ways to use the archived web
• URL search -> single page
• Full-text search -> single page
• Visualisation -> trend -> page

15. Changing aesthetics
gov.ie, captured by archive.org, 15 August 2000

16. Vanished content
southtippcoco.ie, captured by archive.org, 4 Jan 2014

17. Visualising trends: Ngram
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/shine/graph

18. Ways to use the archived web
• URL search -> single page
• Full-text search -> single page
• Visualisation -> trend -> page
• Direct access to WARC
• Derived datasets
• API access

19. Derived datasets from the BL
From JISC UK Web Domain Dataset (1996-
2010)
• File format profile
• Geo-index
• Crawled URL Index (CDX)
• Host Link Graph
Public domain at data.webarchive.org.uk

20. Creationism ?
• non-evolutionary account of human
origins
• modern
• a long history
• a feature of some parts of evangelicalism
• (anti-evolutionism, Intelligent Design)

21. The creationist web :
three questions
A justified conspiracy theory about
marginalisation of creationist voices?
A real danger or a moral panic (Truth in
Science) ?
The web as friend of the marginalised
opinion?
http://peterwebster.me/2014/11/18/reading-creationism-in-the-web-archive/

22. UK Host Link Graph (1996-
2010)
2008 | newsimg.bbc.co.uk | youtube.com | 45
2008 | archbishopofyork.org.uk | flickr.com | 1
2002 | secularism.org.uk | geocities.com | 1
Public domain at: data.webarchive.org.uk

23. Approach
• selection of key UK creationist sites
• extraction of all unique inbound referring
hosts for 1996-2010
• inspection and classification

24. Caveats on method
• partial nature of the dataset
• benchmarking of absolute numbers
• selective sample
• what does a link mean, anyway ?
• not looking at number of linking resources
per host

25. Truth in Science: how
significant?
• only 46 unique inbound hosts
• … of which many were other creationists
or secularist sites
• two churches, one school
• fewer in 2010 than 2007

27. Conclusions
• a utopian dream unfulfilled
• a genuine moral panic
• a justified conspiracy theory

28. Next steps (1)
1. NI the 'creationism capital of Europe'?
(Analysis of:
• links from GB organisations to NI
creationists
• links from NI to RoW)
2. What about creationism in .ie ?

29. Next steps (2)
Project: EU National Web Spheres
• part of resaw.eu
• investigating the nature of a national web
domain
• .. including the interlinking between them
• case study I: Anglican & Presbyterian
churches in Ireland, north and south

30. Web Archives for Historians
@HistWebArchives , http://webarchivehistorians.org/

31. Questions ?
Peter Webster
peter@websterresearchconsulting.com
@pj_webster
peterwebster.me
websterresearchconsulting.com