Social Media Archiving Q&A Webinar

How to archive and preserve social media content is a prominent issue in the web archiving community, with the preservation of government social media content becoming increasingly important. Governments around the world use social media to communicate policies, share information, and engage with the public. But how do we ensure that this content is captured and preserved as part of the historical record?

In a recent blog series, the National Archives of the Netherlands (NANETH) and the National Archives of Luxembourg (ANLux) collaborated to discuss their efforts on this issue. The three-part series focuses on initiatives and scope, tools and techniques, and advocacy.

In this webinar, Susanne van den Eijkel and Lotte Wijsman of NANETH, Michel Cottin and Camille Forget of ANLux, and Ben Els of the National Library of Luxembourg (BnL) will present a short overview of this project, while Tom Storrar and Sarah Dietz of The National Archives, UK, will give an update on their efforts to capture social media content for the UK Government Web Archive (UKGWA), as detailed in this blog post.

These brief presentations will be followed by a Q&A. Participants are encouraged to:

• read the blog posts from NANETH, ANLux, and UKGWA, and
• bring their own use cases to discuss with panelists.

AGENDA

• Introduction
• Susanne van den Eijkel and Lotte Wijsman of NANETH, Michel Cottin and Camille Forget of ANLux, and Ben Els of BnL
• Tom Storrar and Sarah Dietz of The National Archives, UK
• Joint Q&A session with all presenters
• Wrap-up

SPEAKERS

Michel Cottin is currently serving as a Digital Curator at the National Archives of Luxembourg, he leads strategic projects such as a national digital preservation policy for Luxembourg’s public sector. His work aligns with the National Interoperability Framework (NIF) and involves collaboration with European standards bodies, including the CEN 468 delegation and the BENELUX program. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michel-cottin-902a979/

Sarah Dietz is the Senior Product Manager for the UK Government Web Archive at The National Archives, UK. She oversees day-to-day operations and continuous improvement of the service, leading a team of in-house web archivists and working closely with suppliers to deliver scalable harvesting of UK government websites and social media. 

Ben Els has been the digital curator of the Luxembourg Web Archive at the National Library of Luxembourg since 2017. He is mainly involved in building thematic and event collections. Moreover, he is the contact point for website owners, subject experts and is looking for ways to improve our knowledge about Luxembourgish websites.

Camille Forget is serving as a Digital curator at the National Archives of Luxembourg. She works on several digital preservation issues, such as defining a formats policy for Luxembourg’s public sector. She leads the social media collection campaigns in collaboration with Luxembourg government organisations and develops technical solutions for sorting digital archives. https://www.linkedin.com/in/camille-f-557100240/

Tom Storrar is Head of Web Archiving at The National Archives, UK. He has been working on archiving UK government websites and social media since the government began to use social media over 15 years ago. Tom is interested in how a diverse range of tools, practices, and collaborations can secure these important digital records and how these can best be presented to users.

Susanne van den Eijkel is an advisor on digital record keeping at the National Archives of the Netherlands. Previously employed at the KBNL (National Library of the Netherlands), Susanne has over 5 years experience in web and social media archiving. In her current job, she advises Dutch government organisations on how to keep information findable, available, readable, interpretable, and reliable for those who are entitled to it, from the moment of creation and for as long as necessary.

Lotte Wijsman is the Preservation Researcher at the National Archives of the Netherlands. Her work spans projects on significant properties, JHOVE, Flash content in web archives, and social media archiving. She also co-organizes the Bits and Bots study group, together with Susanne van den Eijkel and Franceska Mackenzie, which empowers archivists with digital skills.

RESOURCES

• Making the UK Government Social Media Archive even better
• Preserving Government Social Media in the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Part 1)
• Preserving Government Social Media in the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Part 2)
• Preserving Government Social Media in the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Part 3)
• From Theory to Practice: The First Steps in Social Media Archiving
• Developing Social Media Archiving Guidelines at the National Archives of the Netherlands