WORKSHOP: HACKING THE ARCHIVE
WHERE: THE EDINBURGH FUTURES INSTITUTE (EFI), 1.40 | Hybrid teaching space
WHEN: 24 JUNE 2026, 13:30-16:30 BST
REGISTRATION: https://forms.gle/7MNE9BC5EVC8RyPq8
Please note that this is an in-person event and remote participation will not be available.
HACKING THE ARCHIVE: BROWSER TOOLS, WEB PRESERVATION, AND RESEARCH
How do digital platforms shape what we remember, and how do we save what’s at risk of disappearing? Understanding today’s web means looking beneath the surface of the interfaces we use every day.
Join us for a hands-on workshop led by Dr. Tim Sherratt and inspired by State Library Victoria’s Code Club, where we will demystify the browser and scraping tools. In this session, you will learn how to treat the web not just as a static resource, but as a living archive that you can explore, customize, and actively preserve.
The workshop will introduce browser-based tools that let you modify websites without needing backend access: bookmarklets and userscripts.
Whether you want to build custom research shortcuts, capture at-risk web materials, or stage your own digital interventions, this workshop will give you the practical skills to safely adapt, critique, and preserve the digital world.
This workshop is organised in partnership with the IIPC, National Library of Scotland, the Edinburgh Futures Institute, the University of Edinburgh, the Digital Cultural Heritage Research Cluster, and the International GLAM Labs Community.
You will learn how
- to use basic inspection tools to see underlying web structures and metadata..
- bookmarklets and basic scripts can scrape data or reshape how web pages display in your browser.
- to navigate, critique, and work around the limitations of digital collections.
Target audience
No prior coding experience is required. This workshop is designed for researchers, librarians, artists, students, and anyone curious about how digital media is constructed, modified, and saved for the future. Bring a laptop and your favorite browser.
Dr. Tim Sherratt is an Australian digital historian, cultural data specialist, and self-described “historian and hacker.” He specializes in researching the politics, possibilities, and accessibility of digital heritage within galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM).
From 2015 to 2023, Dr. Sherratt served as an Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at the University of Canberra. He holds a PhD in the history of science from the Australian National University. Dr. Sherratt is widely recognized for creating the GLAM Workbench, a collection of open-source tools and tutorials that help researchers scrape and analyze historical data. His work bridges the gap between traditional historical research and modern data science.