The “Archived Web”
For humanities scholarship, the Web assumes paramount importance because of the need for Web archives and methods for studying those archives. The materials on the Internet document all aspects of contemporary life. However, content is regularly removed from the web, or modified, or becomes inaccessible in other ways. Such changes typically occur much faster than is the case with other storage media. Materials that exist in web archives will be a significant repository as the original digital materials disappear. For digital humanists, and humanists in general, web archives have some defining characteristics (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
First, Web archives are real-time archives. Because of the rapid pace of modification and deletion of web materials, the decision as to what to preserve in an archive is an urgent task, as online material can disappear or be irretrievably modified at any time (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
Another characteristic of the “Archived Web” is that it is “reborn”, i.e. preservation results in a version that is different in some respects to the original material. Archived material is not the same as a copy of material that was online. Decisions must be made as to what omit from an archive, what parts to archive, and what files and other resources to retain (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
Web archives are multitemporal and multispatial, because they are original web materials, including URLs, images, hyperlinks, and the sites themselves are by nature dynamic and exist with multiple versions that vary temporally. Furthermore, in archiving, different parts of websites are archived at different times, and therefore, web elements in Web archive have a patchwork nature, and are therefore multispatial (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
Finally, Web archives are typically reactive, as they must keep pace with rapid developments in software and other resources, including JavaScript programs, integration of video, and other resources that become part of websites. Consequently, archivers and archiving processes must react and adapt to these new developments (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).