Conference Paper: “Bots, Seeds and People: Web Archives as Infrastructure”

The following conference paper was recently shared on arXiv will be presented at CSCW ’17, February 25-March 01, 2017 in Portland, OR.
Title
Bots, Seeds and People: Web Archives as Infrastructure
Authors
Ed Summers
University of Maryland
Ricardo Punzalan
University of Maryland
Source
via arXiv
Abstract

The field of web archiving provides a unique mix of human and automated agents collaborating to achieve the preservation of the web. Centuries old theories of archival appraisal are being transplanted into the sociotechnical environment of the World Wide Web with varying degrees of success. The work of the archivist and bots in contact with the material of the web present a distinctive and understudied CSCW shaped problem. To investigate this space we conducted semi-structured interviews with archivists and technologists who were directly involved in the selection of content from the web for archives. These semi-structured interviews identified thematic areas that inform the appraisal process in web archives, some of which are encoded in heuristics and algorithms. Making the infrastructure of web archives legible to the archivist, the automated agents and the future researcher is presented as a challenge to the CSCW and archival community.

Direct to Full Text Article (14 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Interviews, Journal Articles, News, Preservation