Legal deposit in the digital area: archiving the French Web at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Clément Oury

Legal deposit in

the digital area Archiving the French web at the

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Clément Oury Head of Digital Legal Deposit

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Is it worthwhile to

archive the web?

Is it a national library’s core mission?

How does it fit with national libraries’ other

missions and activities?

How can they tackle this huge challenge?

The web is a library


Or: all digital equivalents of library

holdings are available on the web

Online newspapers

Digital legal deposit at the BnF - Clément Oury -

July 9th, 2013 6 6 21 mars 2012 Web archives as sources - Clément Oury -

Digital Humanities Luxembourg 6

Scholarly publications




Official publications




Photographs


July 9th, 2013 9 9

Online literature and net-art




Audiovisual content


July 9th, 2013 11 11 28 février 2013 Le dépôt légal de l'Internet - Clément Oury -

Présentation à l'ENSCI 11

Audiovisual content




E-books


The web is a

(fragile) library




Online newspapers


July 9th, 2013 16


July 9th, 2013 17 17

20 mars 2013 L'"archivage du Web"- Clément Oury - Forum

des archivistes, Angers 17

Web documents are

library documents

So national libraries are entitled to

save them


July 9th, 2013 19

1537 : books

1672 : engravings

1925 : photographs

1938 : sounds

1975 : videos

1992 : radio, TV, software

2006 : the Internet

Legal deposit: 1537-…

“Are subject to legal deposit

all signs, signals, writings,

images, sounds or messages

of any kind communicated to

the public by electronic

means”


July 9th, 2013 20

How to adapt a five centuries

old law to the web?

Defining borders: the French web

All .fr websites (+.re, .paris, etc.)

All websites on a French-owned TLD

All content produced on French territory

Archive every website at least once a year

No judgment on the website’s “value”

A mission shared with national audiovisual

institute (INA) for radio and TV websites

The web is not a

library


July 9th, 2013 22

Or the web is not only the

world’s largest library

The web is big

2,5 millions of .fr websites

The web is fast

Web pages may change every day

The web is not only a publication

place

It is a place where people

communicate and interact




This is a publication


July 9th, 2013 24 24

Is this a publication?


July 9th, 2013 25

And this one?


July 9th, 2013 26

The web is not a

library

And it is worthwhile to save it


July 9th, 2013 27

Historical / sociological sources




Saving memories of

individuals


July 9th, 2013 29

Access restrictions

Access is provided onsite only

on all computers in all BnF research reading

rooms

Access is restricted to “researchers” onsite

Not only scholars, but all citizens that have a

demonstrated need to access web archives

No preservation issues anymore but to enforce

Intellectual property rights

Personal data protection

Access will be opened in main regional libraries

The web is not a

library

It is impossible to save it all


July 9th, 2013 31

Calendar year

Number of

websites

Broad crawls - each year

- 2,5 millions .fr

domains

Ongoing crawls: - running on the whole year

- news or reference websites

Project crawls : - one shots

- related to an event or

a theme

BnF “mixed model” of

harvesting

It is a national library

mission

But it is a shared responsibility


July 9th, 2013 33

Focused crawls: who selects

websites?

Content curators

Within BnF : 12 collection and

legal deposit departments 12 « coordinators » 70 recommending

officers

Regional libraries 20 libraries associated for 2012 electoral crawl

University libraries and laboratories

Associations and individuals


July 9th, 2013 34

National cooperation

Cooperation

for the 2012

presidential

and

parliamentary

elections


July 9th, 2013 35

International cooperation


July 9th, 2013 36

New challenges and issues

arising… Harvesting new documents: e-books,

applications

Combine web crawls and direct deposit

Build collections at an international level

World War I

European Elections in 2014

Better indexing and better promotion of web

archives

Especially towards researchers communities

Questions ?

Technology

Legal deposit in the digital area: archiving the French Web at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Clément Oury