Researchers and scholars now will be able to delve into archived Web sites captured by the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service (WAS). This new tool enables faculty, researchers and librarians to capture, curate and preserve Web sites, thus creating permanent archives available to researchers everywhere. The social history of our times is now being preserved in archives as rich and varied as the contentious 2003 California recall election, hundreds of California state Web archives, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Web archive and the Middle East Political Sites archive. New archives continually are being built and published and will appear along with the current archives, available at webarchives.cdlib.org/.
The Web has revolutionized our access to information. Documents and publications that once were difficult to find now are readily available to anyone at any time. Popular reactions to historical events unfold via blogs and personal Web sites, and we have an unprecedented view into popular culture and the formation of public policy. "This is a tool that can track censorship in China, political regimes in Iran, and social commentary around the world," states Laine Farley, California Digital Library's executive director. "CDL and the UC libraries are leading the way in building collections for the 21st century."
Ready access to these publications cannot be taken for granted. Web pages and documents are as easy to change or remove as they are to publish. When sites are redesigned, when new administrations take office, when policies or organizations change, we witness the wholesale disappearance of information. State and local Web publications particularly are at risk. In many cases, these documents no longer are available in print, and libraries are challenged to continue their historic role as cultural memory institutions in the digital environment.
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