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Inside Iowa State, a newspaper for faculty and staff, is published by the Office of University Relations.

Aug. 29, 2008

University archives captures ISU web history

by Paula Van Brocklin

From tarnished trophies to student theses, university archives is in the business of preserving Iowa State history. Now, ISU web pages have a place in history as well.

Last spring, university archives purchased an annual subscription to Archive-It, a web site preservation program that permanently captures web pages. University archives staff piloted the program in the fall of 2007, successfully preserving web pages from ISU Extension, the policy library and student organizations.

"Preserving this information is a major goal of university archives and its effort to develop an electronic records program," said Tanya Zanish-Belcher, library associate professor and head of special collections. "It directly reflects our mission to collect and preserve historical information and records about the university."

Archive-It is a first step in university archives' goal to document electronic data.

"It's not the end all, be all, but it's a really good start," Zanish-Belcher said. "It's one more piece of the puzzle."

Priorities

Zanish-Belcher said ISU is using Archive-It to capture web pages for posterity, not for official record.

"It's a snapshot of what's out there," she said. "It captures activities, but not in an authoritative way."

Preserving the colleges' pages is a top priority. Web sites within the records retention guidelines (see www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/arch/retention.html) and general ISU pages, such as university administration, Faculty Senate and Professional and Scientific Council, are priorities as well.

How it works

Michele Christian, collections archivist, manages Iowa State's web preservation efforts. She selects the pages to preserve by designating certain URLs. A web crawler (search device) visits the URLs, takes snapshots of the pages and saves them to its own server off-site.

Anyone may browse Iowa State's archived web pages.

"Anyone in the public or campus community who is interested in the history of the university [may view the pages]," Zanish-Belcher said.

Go to www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/collections/webarch.html to access ISU's archived pages. All pages are date-stamped with a brightly colored disclaimer stating they are archived.

History has shown -- and Zanish-Belcher knows history -- that people will want to research old web pages someday.

"We're collecting for the future," she said. "I think this is something people will want eventually."

Quote

"Preserving this information is a major goal of university archives and its effort to develop an electronic records program. It directly reflects our mission to collect and preserve historical information and records about the university."

Tanya Zanish-Belcher,
library associate professor and head of special collections.