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July 07, 2008
Web Archiving and 'Curating'
In the May/June issue of D-Lib Magazine, there is an article on an OpenSource tool for selective web archiving called 'Web Curator'. While still in the early stages of the tool (version 1.1), this brings up some important issues as related to digital libraries. Selecting information from online sources and ascertaining their validity is often overlooked in everyday online browsing. Conversely, the research and academic environments, which are adapting its practices into the digital realm, are often more skeptical to incorporate digital content into serious debate or research.
This OpenSource tool is a way to organize web content into subject or event 'packages' which would enable users to provide a way of bringing together valuable information in a way that would also provide quality assessment of the content. The tool was developed between the National Library of New Zealand and the British Library and is freely available at http://webcurator.sf.net . The key motivation for the National Library of New Zealand was to provide a way to organize and capture content relating to New Zealand history, including web pages, images, multimedia files, blogs and text documents. The tool also allows for the harvest of the digital material as well. In a way, the preservation of digital material is viewed as a type of social history, relevant to the identity of the country and to hold onto cultural memory in a more tangible way than shortlived websites and changing URLs. While this tool is in the early stages, the future versions of the Web Curator will be interesting to see in application.
Posted by vad17 at July 7, 2008 08:10 PM
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