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British Library To Archive One Billion UK Websites

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-one-hundred-billion? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The British Library is to begin archiving the entire UK web, including one billion pages from 4.8 million websites, blogs, forums and social media sites. The process will take five months, with the aim of presenting a more complete picture of news events for future generations to read and learn from."

2 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. archive.org? by denpun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why not work with the good folks at archive.org and their Internet wayback machine?

    Is it not a similar idea?

    The Internet Wayback Machine folks could use the funding and would be achieving the same purpose, albeit not in a format that the library folks might want....but they could come to agreement.

    1. Re:archive.org? by kaiidth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Without wishing to offend it, the BL is a monolithic organisation that doesn't always play well with others. Part of that is because funding doesn't always work that way. You can get money for claiming that you are going to do the very first über-awesome UK archive, but your chances of receiving the funding becomes rather lower if in the very first breath you point out that somebody else has been doing pretty much this for a decade. Another part of it is: most politicians would likely want the national heritage, such as it is (jubilee celebration tweets - please...) to be held by that nation's own national library.

      I would imagine the BL have referenced archive.org work extensively, but differentiate this project with what tits in suits like to call "a compelling USP." To put it in plain English, they'll have a neat explanation that suggests that they are totally aware of previous work in the domain whilst making sure that this project looks a) different, b) excitingly new and c) contextually, better.