Archiving Websites – Government may decide on owners rights

The Department of Culture, Media and Sports are currently debating whether certain institutions will be able to take snapshots of websites without the owners permission in order to archive websites for future generations.

The idea has been raised following questions regarding the cultural importance of having a searchable record of archived websites. The British Library has been archiving snapshots of websites for the last 6 years and recently launched a website to show the collection that it feels is culturally important. This can be viewed at the UK Web Archive. The British Library and National Library of New Zealand developed the Web Curator tool, an open source application, to take these snapshots.

Each website owner currently has to be contacted by the British Library to give their permission to have their website archived. They claim that only 24% of people have responded and that the current legal position restricts their ability to collect and archive information. This may result in only 1% of free UK websites being archived by 2011.

The Internet Archive based in California is one of the most successful archiving website projects and has an opt out policy for website owners. It provides owners with a way of removing access from the archive and can also prevent a snapshot taking place. This may be one of the ways forward to enable the UK to archive more website content for future generations.