Addressing our many solitudes: building a web archives community of practice in Canada 11:30-12:00

Corey Davis, Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL)
Nich Worby, University of Toronto
Jeremy Heil, Queen’s University

Canada is a large country with many stakeholders involved in web archiving, from city archives to national libraries. Until 2017, most of these efforts took place in relative isolation, which resulted in needless duplication of efforts and significant collection gaps. This session will provide an overview of the establishment of the Canadian Web Archiving Coalition (CWAC), a national effort to formalize collaboration and coordination for web archiving across the country.

Under the auspices of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries Digital Preservation Working Group and Advancing Research Committee (CARL DPWG and CARL ARC), the Canadian Web Archiving Coalition (CWAC) was established in 2017 to develop an inclusive community of practice within Canadian libraries, archives, and other memory institutions engaged or otherwise interested in web archiving, in an effort to identify gaps and opportunities best addressed by nationally coordinated strategies, actions, and services, including collaborative collection development, training, infrastructure development, and support for practitioners.

This session will provide an overview of the CWAC in an effort to help our international colleagues understand and connect with web archiving efforts in Canada, but also to serve as an example for other jurisdictions attempting to develop an effective national community of practice and coordinating mechanism where before there was only haphazard and informal collaboration and coordination.