A Guide for Archiving Web Pages
Navigation
Pages in This Section
- What is web archiving- How is web archiving done?
- - Web page best practices
- - Assuring accessibility
- - Using style sheets
- - Using meta tags
- - - Dublin Core metadata
- - Using a CMS
- - Assuring content integrity
- - Using a snapshot tool
- - Using web archiving tools
- - Server maintenance
- - Backing up
- Documentation
Documentation of policies, guidelines, and standards
Polices, procedures, guidelines, and standards can be formal or informal, published on a web site or kept in a notebook, maintained in draft or formally disseminated, but whatever form they take, they should be prepared. As with general archival policy statements, it is probably best to view them as works in progress, being constantly updated as time allows and circumstances dictate.
They should address all aspects of web archiving including practices for the creation, maintenance, and backing up of pages; policies and workflows for detection and downloading of pages as they change over time; and guidelines for maintaining the servers on which pages are saved and insuring that multiple copies are saved on mirror sites.
Regarding creation and maintenance of pages, policy statements generally cover the ownership and control of the site, objectives and goals for the site, accessibility, presence or absence of commercial activity such as advertising or fund raising, security and privacy, copyright and other intellectual property rights. They cover content and quality, including rules on objectionable, offensive, confidential or proprietary materials and links to such materials. They cover rules for consistency and technical matters, including page formatting, browser compatibility, coding standards, header and footer standards, and standards for metadata. They cover site organization, URI naming conventions, and maintenance of URIs to prevent broken links. They include a file proofing rule to catch typographic errors and the like.
Regarding detection and archiving of web pages as they change over time, policy statements will state purposes and explain what pages are harvested, how frequently and by what means.
Good policy statements will include flow charts showing architecture and outlining workflows.
Some resources on documenting policies, guidelines, and standards
- Recommended Practices for Digital Preservationfrom the National Library of Australia, "prepared to assist publishers, creators and libraries in their activities related to information delivery."
- Standards Review and Recommendation Publication from the Texas Department of Information Resources.
