Users, technologies, organisations: Towards a cultural history of world web archiving

If 2015 marked the elapse of 25 years since the birth of the web, 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of web archiving: of systematic attempts to preserve web content and make it accessible to scholars and the public. As such, the time is ripe to make an initial assessment of the history of the movement, and the patterns into which it has already fallen. Although there have been short sketches of this history, this chapter represents the first attempt to document the subject at length. It concentrates on what might be termed the cultural history of the movement, addressing not the question of how web archiving has been carried out, but of why, by whom, and on whose behalf. If this chapter serves to orient users as to some of the questions they should be asking of their sources, and of the institutions that provide them, it will have achieved its aim