Canada: Multiple Institutions Launch Truth and Reconciliation Web Archive, New Resource Uses Archive-It Service

From the University of Winnipeg:

The University of Winnipeg Archives — together with the University of Manitoba, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) — is working to increase public access to records documenting the history of Residential Schools in Canada.
[On Thursday], the institutions jointly launched the Truth and Reconciliation Web Archive, a pilot project aimed at preserving and providing access to websites related to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and responses to its Calls to Action.
This new digital archive captures websites, news articles, governmental documents, personal blogs, social media accounts, commentaries, and academic material published online related to the history of the Indian Residential School system and the TRC.
“Many of the records documenting the work of the TRC and the public’s response to its Calls to Action are websites that are at great risk of disappearing without notice,” said Brett Lougheed, UWinnipeg Archivist and Digital Curator. “This resource will preserve these sites before they disappear and provide a central location to access them now and in the future. In this way, we hope to assist Winnipeggers, Manitobans and all Canadians along their paths to reconciliation.”
Recent UWinnipeg graduate, Jasmin Geling (BA, 17), was hired through Young Canada Works to archive relevant websites within the jurisdiction of Manitoba — staff at LAC similarly archived websites of a national scope.
Geling worked closely with Lougheed, under the direction of the NCTR and LAC, to archive nearly 600 webpages for the project. These sites have been captured, described, and curated using the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service.
“I was responsible for outlining and implementing the scope of how these URLs were thematically categorized, creating appropriate metadata to make search results for websites more accessible,” Geling said. “This project was — I would say — part of a new frontier in digital archiving where the pre-determined rules of traditional archival practices were not applicable to digital archives.”

Direct to Truth and Reconciliation Web Archive
See Also: Web Archive on Residential Schools a First (via Winnipeg Free Press)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Libraries, News