Web Archiving Tools: Mellon Foundation Awards Rhizome $1 Million for Further Development of Webrecorder

Ed. Note From Gary Price: Congrats to the Rhizome team! We have been  constant users of the Webrecorder web archiving tool  since it was in beta and are excited to learn that its development will continue. If you are not familiar with this free service we strongly encourage you to visit and try it out and/or watch the intro video embedded below.

From Today’s Funding Announcement:

We’re thrilled to announce today that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Rhizome a $1 million grant to underwrite the next phase of development of Webrecorder, our platform to create and share fully interactive, high-fidelity archival copies of websites past and present.
This largest gift in Rhizome’s history will support Webrecorder’s implementation in institutional contexts, while upgrading capture and usability for all users. We’re proud to offer this innovative, open-source service free-of-charge at https://webrecorder.io—take it out for a spin! (Or check out the code.)
You may have noticed that “Software” tab appear in our redesigned header. This is merely formalizing a program thread—software development—that is core to our multi-tiered support of born-digital art and culture, and embodied in Webrecorder. This is also a longtime commitment, dating back to the development of rhizome.org (then .com!) in 1996, the ArtBase in 1999, the various ArtBase interfacesthereafter, and various projects involving the Emulation as a Service framework, among other significant code-based endeavors.

This program is led by preservation director Dragan Espenschied and software director Ilya Kreymer, who conceived the Webrecorder initiative. Along with what’s next for this effort, we’re excited to welcome archivist and educator Anna Perricci as Associate Director, Strategic Partnerships, and a “Co-Principal Investigator” on the Mellon grant, along with Dragan and Ilya. Anna will be focused on growing Webrecorder’s user base and helping it become recognized as an indispensable tool in web archiving practice broadly. She’ll join an already stellar WR team, with Mark Beasley, our multi-talented software engineer, and Pat Shiu, who is tasked with creating a voice, aesthetic, and identity for a product without much precedent. (We’re also hiring a new backend developer—applications due January 16!)

Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement

Filed under: Awards, Funding, News, Patrons and Users, Preservation