IIPC webinar: Web Archiving the War in Ukraine
The main focus of this webinar is present efforts around archiving Telegram which became one of the most important communication platforms during the war in Ukraine (OPORA survey, June 2022). The leads of the new IIPC collaborative collection “War in Ukraine” will also give an update on the results of the first crawl. Recordings now available for IIPC members: https://netpreserve.org/members-only-archive/ukraine-webinar/
I. The Telegram Archive of the War: The Center for Urban History in Lviv
The Telegram messaging app became the most popular source of information among Ukrainians during the first months of the Russian invasion. It is used not only for updates but also for horizontal humanitarian aid communication helping people in an evacuation, transport logistics, shelters or food supply. Moreover, social media is an integral part of the current warfare, including disinformation campaigns, open-source intelligence and cyber-attacks. Its documentation, therefore, means grasping the totality of this war, which covers all areas from the battlefield developments to the everyday routine across Ukraine on either side of the frontline, intertwining both physical and cyberspace.
This initiative was launched to preserve war-related Telegram communication as an archive, creating long-term opportunities for future research. With no previous background in social media archiving, the initiative immediately faced a range of methodological and practical challenges that will be offered to discuss during the webinar.
II. Archiving Telegram and VK: Internet Archive
Mark Graham, from the Internet Archive, will share an update on efforts to archive portions of Telegram and VK.com to the Wayback Machine.
III. Web Archiving the War in Ukraine: Collaborative Collections
The IIPC Content Development Working Group (CDG) launched a new collaborative collection to archive web content related to the war in Ukraine, aiming to map the impact of this conflict on digital history and culture. The collections leads, Anaïs Crinière-Boizet, Kees Teszelszky, and Vladimir Tybin, will give an update on this collection.
Speaker Bios
Anaïs Crinière-Boizet, Digital Curator, National Library of France
After studying social sciences and cinema, Anaïs Crinière-Boizet graduated as a library curator (ENSSIB) in 2019. She first held the position of public services manager at the University Library of Arras from 2019 to 2021. In 2021, she joined the Bibliothèque nationale de France where she is responsible for cooperation within the Digital Legal Deposit department.
Mark Graham, Director of the Wayback Machine, Internet Archive
Mark Graham has created and managed innovative online products and services since 1984. As Director of the Wayback Machine he is responsible for capturing, preserving and helping people discover and use, more than 1 billion new web captures each week. Mark was most recently Senior Vice President with NBC News where he managed several business units including GardenWeb and Stringwire, a live, mobile, video platform for collaborative citizen reporting. Mark was Senior Vice President of Technology with iVillage, an early Internet company that focused on women and community. He co-founded Rojo Networks, one of the first large-scale feed aggregators and personalized blog readers. Mark has been overseeing a number of projects related to archiving the war in Ukraine, including support for the SUCHO project, the new “Collection Search” service, and archiving Russian Independent Media (TV, TV Rain), Radio (Echo of Moscow) as well as web-based resources.
Taras Nazaruk, Head of Digital History projects at the Center for Urban History in Lviv
Taras Nazaruk is head of the Digital History projects at the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine. His background is in journalism, media studies and communication design. Since 2016, he’s been working on a project called Lviv Interactive, the digital encyclopedia on the modern history of Lviv. His areas of interest include digital history, digital storytelling, social media archiving, Soviet cybernetic legacy, Internet histories, and media studies.
During the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he’s been working on a Telegram archive of the war.
Kees Teszelszky, Curator Digital Collections, National Library of the Netherlands
Dr. Kees Teszelszky has been online since 1992 and makes use of computers since 1984. He is a Meme Lord and Curator of the digital collections at KB – National Library of The Netherlands. He graduated at the University of Leiden (Political Science, 1999) and at the University of Amsterdam (East European Studies, 1998), did a PhD training program at the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies and obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen (Cultural History, 2006). His research field covers the selection, harvest and presentation of the web archive and other born digital sources at the KB. He is currently involved in projects on web archaeology, harvesting of online news and the historic sources of our Post-truth era.
Vladimir Tybin, Head of Digital Legal Deposit, National Library of France
At the BnF since 2009, Vladimir Tybin first held the position of Head of distribution at the publishing department with the mission of coordinating the digital development of BnF Éditions. In 2017, he was in charge of digital collections in the Digital Legal Deposit department, whose mission is the legal deposit of the Internet and born digital documents. Digital Curator, He was also responsible for the legal deposit of e-books. Since 2021, he is now the Head of Digital Legal Deposit department.
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