The Political Communications Web Archive Project was an investigation and planning effort to develop effective methodologies for the systematic, sustainable preservation of Web-based political communications.
The effort focused on Web materials produced by political groups and NGOs in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. Those materials included reports, manifestos, constitutions and declarations, official statements, and other documents issued via the Web by individual political activists, political parties, and popular front and radical organizations. Such communications are vital primary source materials for history and area studies, but tend to be produced erratically and disappear quickly.
The CRL Political Communications Web Archiving project, undertaken in 2003-2004, explored methodologies for the systematic, sustainable preservation of Web-based political communications. Because these important communications comprise a valuable source of information for historical studies and the social sciences, but are by nature fugitive and susceptible to loss, it is important to ensure their long-term survival and broad availability for research. Drawing upon the expertise of technology and subject specialists at New York University, Cornell University, Stanford University, and the University of Texas–Austin, the cooperative effort built upon investigations underway at those institutions and drew from the broader community—including the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library and the Internet Archive—to identify methodologies that can generally be applied by the larger research community and across regions.
The project focused on Web sites (as defined in wireframe document), including those created by individuals and institutions. These included sites of political parties, movements, radical organizations or NGOs in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Related materials under the political communications rubric that might be addressed by subsequent investigations included listserv digests, RSS feeds, databases, and deeper Web sites that are password-protected or otherwise designed to be robot-restricted.
The original proposal for the Political Communications Web Archiving investigation, submitted to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2002, is available at the link below.
Links
[1] https://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/reports/PCWAFinalReport.pdf
[2] https://www.crl.edu/facets/africa
[3] https://www.crl.edu/facets/latin-america
[4] https://www.crl.edu/facets/southeast-asia
[5] https://www.crl.edu/facets/human-rights
[6] https://www.crl.edu/facets/law-and-government
[7] https://www.crl.edu/facets/twentieth-century-conflicts
[8] https://www.crl.edu/facets/archiving-and-preservation
[9] https://www.crl.edu/reports
[10] http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/crl/
[11] https://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/d6/attachments/pages/Polwebproposalwebversion.pdf