On May 5 2010, the California Digital Library began using the Web Archiving Service (http://was.cdlib.org) to archive sites related to the gulf oil spill. One month later, this event is unfortunately still unfolding. While we are currently archiving nearly 200 websites related to this event, the scope of the disaster is expanding and is being reflected in a wider range of websites (blogs, industry and tourism sites). We invite you to help us ensure that the public has continued access to Web content surrounding this event well into the future.
The University of North Texas has provided this Web Archive nomination tool to enable a wider range of people to recommend new websites for capture. You do not need an account to nominate sites; just provide your contact information when you nominate your first site. You can look up URLs to determine if the site you're interested in has already been nominated. You can also review the Oil Spill Archive site list which will give you a quick overview of the sites currently being archived.
While CDL's primary role in Web archiving is to provide tools and support to collection specialists, we also use the service ourselves. This helps us continue to develop efficiencies in the service and it keeps us keenly aware of the curator's perspective! It also enables us to provide public archives of major events. Event-based archives can be a particular challenge; they are reflected in a wide range of fields and they unfold quickly so there is no ready-made list of relevant sites. The Deepwater Horizon spill involves environment, oceanography, business, government agencies, and sites local to the gulf coast.
Our starting point for this event was the site list for the Hurricane Katrina archive. In 2005, CDL worked with the Stanford Computer Science department to document Katrina as it unfolded. We wondered if that site list might serve as a basis for the current tragedy unfolding in the gulf, or if there might be a list of core sites one could draw from as a starting point for major events. After identifying the still-relevant sites, we added sites focused specifically on the Deepwater Horizon event and are using this nomination tool to expand the sites directly related to the oil spill.
We will emerge from this project with an archive documenting the event, new ideas about how to make the tools more efficient, and some observations about both the nature of this event as reflected on the Web, and whether there can be a useful set of 'starting point' sites. We will make an announcement when the archive is available to the public, and will post observations about this project on the Web Archiving Service Facebook Page.