How can we improve our web collection? An evaluation of webarchiving at the KB National Library of the Netherlands (2007–2017)

Abstract

In 2007, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Dutch National Library (KB-NL), started the project ‘webarchiving’ based on a selection of Dutch websites. The initial selection of 1000 websites has currently grown into over 12,000 selected websites, crawled at different intervals. Although due to legal restrictions the current use is limited to the KB-NL reading room, it is important that the KB-NL includes the requirements of the (future) users in its approach to creating a web collection. With respect to the long-term preservation of the collection, we also need to incorporate the requirements for long-term archiving in our approach, as described in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Model ISO 14721: 2012. This article describes the results of a research project on webarchiving and the web collection of archived sites in the KB-NL, investigating the following questions. What is webarchiving in the Netherlands? What are the selection criteria of KB-NL and how are these related to what can be found on the Dutch web by the contemporary user? What is the influence of the choice of tools we use to harvest the final archived website? Do we know enough of the value of the web collection and the potential usage of it by researchers and how can we improve this value? This article will describe the outcomes of the research, the conclusions and advice that can be drawn from it and it is hoped will inspire broader discussions about the essence of creating web collections for long-term preservation as part of cultural heritage.