What’s Cached is Prologue: Reviewing Recent Web Archives Research Towards Supporting Scholarly Use

Abstract

Web archives are essential to support historical scholarship in the online age. Research on web archives spans many disciplines, often requiring domain-specific expertise. The wide-ranging nature of the literature makes it difficult to obtain a current overview of the field, but this view is needed to identify which core challenges define the field, and assess the different approaches taken to address them. This paper provides such a review of the current landscape of web archives research, focusing on addressing the common challenges faced to support scholarly use of archived web materials. The analysis describes three challenges and identifies key concepts and current approaches for each: (1) how to organize and select from web archives collections; (2) how to critically examine these sources; and (3) how to approach ethics and consent for using archived web materials. The discussion addresses open questions and tensions, highlighting the sociotechnical nature of these challenges and revealing opportunities to apply existing work from the body of knowledge of information studies. It concludes with several recommendations for future research directions to support scholarly use of web archives.