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University of Minnesota Web Archive

Why a University web archive?
Web pages can be an excellent source of historical information precisely because they are ephemeral. Websites are "of the minute" – they provide concise snapshots of institutional priorities, corporate identity, and information as expressed through graphics, logos, links and text.

What is the University Web Archives?
The University Archives selects, preserves, and provides long-term access to historically valuable documentation of the University, no matter what its format. The University Digital Conservancy is the "digital arm" of the University Archives, capturing and providing long-term access to a wide variety of digital content created by the University.

The University Archives selects Web pages for preservation based on anticipated long-term scholarly or administrative value. Examples include the web pages related to the Strategic Positioning process; UThink, the University’s blog service which provides a forum for students, faculty and staff to voice their opinions; the Department of Rhetoric’s blog publication Into the Blogosphere. Web archiving is limited to University sites hosted on University servers.

Who can view the archived websites?
All archived websites are viewable by the public.

What else do I need to know?
Like snapshots and other historical documents, archived websites are frozen in time. They contain only information that was there at the time of the crawl and cannot be altered. For this reason, it is important to remember that archived websites often contain outdated information, broken links, malfunctioning email addresses or errors. They may not reflect current web standards, and may not be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

University Digital Conservancy policies on preservation, access, and copyright apply to all web archiving activities. The University Digital Conservancy and its web archiving activities are subject to all applicable University of Minnesota policies and local, state, and federal law. Because University of Minnesota websites may link to external sites and those links are preserved in the archived version of the site, the crawling process may occasionally result in capture of non-University, copyrighted content.

Questions or comments?
Contact Beth Kaplan, University Archivist: kapla024@umn.edu

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