Collecting, Using and Preserving the Web for Education and Research
Collecter, utiliser et sauvegarder le Web pour l’enseignement et la recherche
Published on Monday, February 26, 2024
Abstract
Founder and editor of the journal Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society since 2016, Niels Brügger is currently Professor in Media Studies at Aarhus University and directs the Centre for Digital Methods and Media. These two days offer an exceptional opportunity to listen to him speak and exchange ideas, thanks to the conference he will give on the afternoon of Monday, March 11, and a workshop he will lead on March 12. With the privilege of Niels Brügger's presence at INSPé Aix-en-Provence, these two days aim to foster reflection on the scientific and educational challenges related to the collection, use and preservation of web archives while offering practical workshops.
Announcement
Presentation
Whether in our studies, research activities or teaching practice, we all make use of documents or services published on websites and social networks. In this context, the web can be a means of communication, encyclopedia, educational resource and automated translation tool, but also a corpus or field of investigation.
While these practices have now become an integral part of our professional and personal routines, they raise questions about modes of knowledge transmission and evaluation, and concerns due to the circulation of false information and the dissemination of text generation tools like ChatGPT. However, questions surrounding the sustainability of information taken from the web still remain in the background. Thirty years from now, what will be left of our university websites, student groups on social networks, academic journals or videos documenting the war in Ukraine? How can we explore, preserve and transmit this inherently digital heritage in a period marked by technological, environmental and political transformations that disrupt the development and dissemination of knowledge and challenge the certainties of ethics and democracy?
Initiatives aimed at collecting and preserving all pages and content published on the web and social media have been around for some time now, dating back to the creation of the Internet Archive in 1996 in the United States and encouraged by the UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage in 2003. In France, web archiving has been entrusted since 2006 to the BNF (National Library of France) and the INA (National Audiovisual Institute) as part of their legal deposit responsibilities. And yet, archived web content remains underexplored in academics despite pioneering initiatives, such as the work of Professor Niels Brügger, a key figure in the international development of Web Archive Studies and the creator of the collective Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials (RESAW). Founder and editor of the journal Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society since 2016, Niels Brügger is currently Professor in Media Studies at Aarhus University and directs the Centre for Digital Methods and Media. These two days offer an exceptional opportunity to listen to him speak and exchange ideas, thanks to the conference he will give on the afternoon of Monday, March 11, and a workshop he will lead on March 12.
With the privilege of Niels Brügger's presence at INSPé Aix-en-Provence, these two days aim to foster reflection on the scientific and educational challenges related to the collection, use and preservation of web archives while offering practical workshops. They also align with the perspective of developing the uses associated with web archiving at Aix-Marseille Université, thus building upon the momentum initiated by the RESAW conference (MUCEM, June 2023).
Schedule
Monday, March 11
2 pm - 4:30 pm: Niels Brügger’s conference open to the public by registration
Registration link: https://evento.renater.fr/survey/conference-niels-bru...-0x7g2are
Why web archives are important sources in historical studies and humanities: challenges and opportunities for research and teaching
Abstract: This lecture introduces the archived web as a historical source, including the challenges and opportunities for research and teaching. The lecture is divided into three main parts. First, a few examples of web history are highlighted, including my own research project about the history of the Danish web in the 1990ies, with focus on the project as such and on the role of the archived web as source. Second, an introduction to the nature of the archived web as a source, including reflections on how this type of document challenges our usual conceptualisations of source criticism. Third, an outline of experiences of using the archived web and digital tools in teaching, with the course ‘Digital Methods’ on Aarhus University’s BA in Media Studies as a case.
Niels Brügger is Professor in Media Studies, and head of the Centre for Digital Methods and Media, Aarhus University, Denmark. Research interests include internet and web historiography, web archiving, and media theory. He has published monographs and a number of edited books, including Oral Histories of the Internet and the Web (Brügger & Goggin (Eds.), Routledge, 2022), The SAGE Handbook of Web History (Brügger & Milligan (Eds.), SAGE, 2018), and The Archived Web: Doing History in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2018). He is co-founder and Managing Editor of the journal Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society (Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2016-)
Tuesday, March 12.
Workshop 1 pm - 5:30 pm
Registration required, limited to 15 people:
INSPé, 2 av. Jules Isaac, Aix-en-Provence. Room: A 107
1 pm - 1:30 pm: Welcome
- Sophie Gebeil, Niels Brügger, Jean-Christophe Peyssard, Mara Bertelsen
1:30 pm - 3 pm: Working with the archived web as a source
- Workshop conducted by Pr. Niels Brügger, head of the Centre for Digital Methods and Media, Aarhus University, Denmark
To fully understand the specific nature of the archived web as a source it is important to know a little about how web archiving is performed, thus we will start with a brief introduction to this. Also, I will briefly introduce the five web strata that a web study can focus on. Then follows a brief introduction to the analytical steps we will go through, and to the Internet Archive which we will be using because it is openly available. The rest of the workshop will be hands-on sessions with small exercises, focusing on (1) extraction of data, (2) text analysis (word frequencies, semantic networks, co-occurrences), and if time permits (3) network analysis or image analyses. Participants will be working on their own computer, and they can work with any archived version of a website of their own choosing, preferably small ones with a view to not making the exercises too complicated. Instructions on software preparations will be communicated to participants before the workshop.
3 pm - 3:30 pm : Break
3:30 pm - 5 pm: Collecting and preserving web pages with Webrecorder
Workshop conducted by Jean-Christophe Peyssard, Head of the MMSH Library
Through practice, participants will be able to learn how to collect web pages in a standardized format (WARC). The objective of this workshop is to gain a better understanding, through user experience, of the challenges and problems of web archiving.
5 pm - 5:30 pm: Feedback and closing discussion
These two days are organized by Sophie Gebeil (UMR7303 TELEMMe, AMU-CNRS / Atelier Visual studies et Humanités numériques), member the IUF, as part of the PICCH research program and with the support of the coordination team for the RESAW 2023 conference, which took place last June in Marseille.
Subjects
- Epistemology and methodology (Main category)
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology > Digital humanities
Places
- Salle de conférence - INSPé, 2 ave Jules Isaac
Aix-en-Provence, France (13)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Monday, March 11, 2024
- Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Keywords
- archivage, web, recherche, enseignement
Contact(s)
- Sophie Gebeil
courriel : sophie [dot] gebeil [at] univ-amu [dot] fr - Mara Bertelsen
courriel : mara [dot] bertelsen [at] wanadoo [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Sophie Gebeil
courriel : sophie [dot] gebeil [at] univ-amu [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Collecting, Using and Preserving the Web for Education and Research », Study days, Calenda, Published on Monday, February 26, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/vwue
