Whilst the importance of preserving websites and web content is recognized already for long time by organizations like UNESCO (2003 Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage) and the EU (EC Recommendation 2011/711/EU), not all EU Member States have legislation in place that allows national heritage institutions to harvest and archive the web. The ILP Lab is partnering with the National Library of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision to examine how, within the confines of the EU legal framework, legislation can be introduced that allows the harvesting and archiving of websites and web content in the national domain. The aim is to avoid a digital black hole in the national heritage collection and to preserve the online digital heritage for the future.
The results of this project, which ran in the first semester of 2020, can be found here.