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Re: capturing websites



The Arizona State Library and Archives is charged with preserving all state
agencies' publications, including Web sites.  Given the size of of the
Arizona State Web space (nearly 200,000 files), we can't imagine downloading
everything.  Further, we would like to maintain functionality of the links
that point within the AZ Web space; the links should point to the
appropriate page within the cache of preserved pages, not the current
version of the page.

Currently we're considering ways to implement this.  Our general notion is
to
1. Have a collections policy that distinguishes what is to be kept.  Our
principal concern is to save document-like Web publications that are not
preserved in another form; i.e., if there's a paper copy that's equivalent,
we won't worry about the Web copy.  We are less interested in collecting
ephemera; brochure and publicity documents.  We are looking at many of the
databases transactions with records preserved through another system; e.g.,
we don't need to save every variation of a web page used to help people
renew their auto tags; MVD keeps that information in a separate record
series.

2. Those pages that are to be kept will be meta tagged.  A publication would
receive a unique id; subsequent editions would be given a version number.
All pages within the publication would include this id number so that
automated software could understand the relationship between the separate
files.  (If a single page is part of two documents, there's no reason it
couldn't have two id numbers.)  We're also looking at a "sequence number,"
which would all machines to identify an ideal order for sequential viewing;
we're looking to use that number to help us general COM versions of the
documents for long-term preservation.

3. A spider will go out and retrieve those files identified for
preservation through meta tags and fix the internal URLs so they point
within the cache.

4. We're looking at using a GILS server to provide access to the pages using
topical meta tags.

Can't cram all the rationale into a short message.  However, I would liek to
identify other state libraries or archives that might be interested in a
partnership on a research project to test this methodology.  (I've talked to
a few already.)

Any comments or questions are welcome.

Richard Pearce-Moses
 rpm@lib.az.us
 602-364-0265

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