In a combination of seminars, hands-on activities and a keynote lecture, this workshop gave humanities researchers the skills to confidently navigate web archives and understand their value in research projects.

Workshop

According to the British Library, 40% of websites disappear from their original location after just two years. The Web represents a significant part of daily life for everyone living in the 21st century: where we get our news, where we find information about health, where we learn about government policies, where we reach out to our friends and family, where we share our ideas and projects. The loss of these vast and complex digital footprints will leave a gaping hole in the historical record, creating significant barriers for future researchers.

This full-day workshop, held in November 2023, introduced web archives and how to use them in research. No prior understanding of web archives or computational skills were needed to participate in this workshop, and the session was aimed towards postgraduate research students in all disciplines of the arts and humanities looking to expand their knowledge of new research sources and methods. The workshop included an introduction to research methods for web archives, suitable for learners completely new to the concept (or a refresher for those already familiar). Speakers provided a review of two projects that centred web archives as their research material and CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto Katie Mackinnon provided a keynote address on her work on digital youth cultures and platform histories. Instructors also provided an introduction to computational methods for web archive research, including practical demonstrations of open source, low barrier-to-entry tools. The workshop ended with an overview of issues concerning copyright and ethics in web archive research.