Introduction 

Introduction 

Mission

To address the need to capture Web-based content relevant to a variety of University of 

Illinois constituencies – including supporting administrative, teaching, and research communities – the Library has subscribed to the Internet Archive supported Archive-It service. This service allows university researchers, archivists, and librarians to preserve online records of historical importance and research interest in an online environment.

Audience 

These policies and guidelines are intended to assist collection editors who have the authority to initiate Web crawls and manage harvested content at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The documentation reflects Archive-It’s documentation and will be updated when Archive-It updates. If you want to see the most up to date information please refer to the Archive-It documentation. 

Roles and Responsibilities

Institutional Administrator Responsibilities:

The Institutional Administrator is the contact point from the subscribing institution to Archive-It. The Library’s Institutional Administrator is Tracy Popp (tpopp2@illinois.edu), Digital Preservation Coordinator. Responsibilities include:

  • Institutional point of contact for Archive-It
  • Contacting the Internet Archive regarding technical and service support questions
  • Creating web archives collections
  • User management including:
    • Creating Collection Editor accounts
    • Monitoring local web archiving activities and data budget
    • Creating and maintaining user training materials

Collection Editor Responsibilities

Each collection created requires at least one Collection Editor to manage the curatorial activity within a web archives collection. The majority of content selection and management responsibilities are managed by this person or persons. A primary Collection Editor is established at the time the project is created and is generally the author of an approved project proposal. Collection Editors responsibilities include:

  • Identifying and proposing web archiving projects which meet collection development guidelines
  • Serving as point of contact for the specified web archives project
  • Maintaining high-quality public web archives demonstrated through activities such as quality assurance monitoring and metadata creation
  • Commitment to following web archiving guidelines including established naming conventions and institutional branding
  • Ensuring that web captures are efficiently using storage space and monitoring allocated collection storage budget
  • Contacting content rights holders and site web masters as necessary
  • Notifying Institutional Administrator if primary Collection Editor role is handed off to another Library employee
  • Suggesting Archive-It feature improvements based on service use and web archives user feedback