European Internet archiving initiatives – review and benchmarking assessment of selected websites

Abstract

Archiving the resources of the global Web is a process that takes different forms and intensities in different parts of the world. The article presents strategies for collecting archival data on the Internet, the history of the creation of Internet archives and the problems of Web archiving in Poland. Its main goal is to evaluate 14 selected European Internet archives, showing their strengths and weaknesses, both in terms of content and functionality. The method in this article was based on heuristic and benchmarking methods. A total of eight criteria were assessed – four content-related and four functional (information about the archive; archive resources; completeness and accuracy of information; communication with the user; design and structure of the website; accessibility of the website; navigation tools; timeliness of the website – frequency of changes and entries of documents into the archive). The research was conducted at the turn of May and June 2023. Apart from the author of this article, 20 students in their second year of supplementary studies in information architecture at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń participated in the study. The conducted research shows that, in terms of content, the assessed websites are at a similar level. Differences are revealed in the assessment of functional criteria. The highest rated content feature was “information about the archive”, the lowest –“communication with the user”. In turn, in the case of functional features, the best scores were for “website timeliness”, and the worst for “service availability” and “service design and structure”. Due to the lack of a Polish Internet archive, the author postulates that future designers should pay special attention to issues related to the general structure of the website, its graphic design, adaptation to the needs of groups of people who may be digitally excluded, as well as the appropriate location of contact forms.