POST: Archiving the Internet: How Historians Can Help #SaveTheWeb

Stephanie Kingsley (American Historical Association) has written a post recapping “Saving the Web: The Ethics and Challenges of Preserving What’s on the Internet,” the one-day symposium held at John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress earlier this month.

“Archiving the Internet: How Historians Can Help #SaveTheWeb” is a detailed and thoroughly referenced summary of the discussions that took place, including presentations by Vint Cerf, James Hendler, Ramesh Jain, Philip Napoli, Abbie Grotke, Jefferson Bailey, Ian Milligan, and Richard Price, among others.

Noting that “speakers were highly aware of the archival act as a form of advocacy,” Kingsley argues that historians should be more involved with the ethical questions around web archiving:

Historians, who work to revive underrepresented voices and untold stories as well as to faithfully represent the past, are well suited to identify the materials needed to reconstruct these narratives, and should join conversations on the ethics of what we save.