Web archiving

Web archiving is the process of collecting, preserving and providing access to material from the World Wide Web. The aim is to ensure that information is preserved in an archival format for research and the public.^[1]

Web archivists typically employ automated web crawlers to capturing the massive amount of information on the Web. A widely known web archive service is the Wayback Machine, run by the Internet Archive.

The growing portion of human culture created and recorded on the web makes it inevitable that more and more libraries and archives will have to face the challenges of web archiving.^[2] National libraries, national archives and various consortia of organizations are also involved in archiving Web content to prevent its loss.

Commercial web archiving software and services are also available to organizations that need to archive their own web content for corporate heritage, regulatory, or legal purposes.