Started in 2017, our Community Webs program has over 175 public libraries and local cultural organizations working to build digital archives documenting the experiences of their communities, especially those patrons often underrepresented in traditional archives. Participating public libraries have created over 1,400 collections documenting local civic life totaling nearly 100 terabytes and tens of millions of individual documents, images, audio/video files, blogs, websites, social media, and more. You can browse many of these collections at the Community Webs website. Participants have also collaborated on digitization efforts to bring minority newspapers online, held public programming and outreach events, and formed local partnerships to help preservation efforts at other mission-aligned organizations. The program has conducted numerous workshops and national symposia to help public librarians gain expertise in digital preservation and cohort members have done dozens of presentations at professional conferences showcasing their work. In the past, Community Webs has received support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Mellon Foundation, the Kahle Austin Foundation, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
We are excited to announce that Community Webs has received $750,000 in funding from The Mellon Foundation to continue expanding the program. The award will allow additional public libraries to join the program and will enable new and existing members to continue their web archiving collection building using our Archive-It service. In addition, the funding will also provide members access to Internet Archive’s new Vault digital preservation service, enabling them to build and preserve collections of any type of digital materials. Lastly, leveraging members’ prior success in local partnerships, Community Webs will now include an “Affiliates” program so member public libraries can nominate local nonprofit partners that can also receive access to archiving services and resources. Funding will also support the continuation of the program’s professional development training in digital preservation and community archiving and its overall cohort and community building activities of workshops, events, and symposia.
We thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support of Community Webs. We are excited to continue to expand the program and empower hundreds of public librarians to build archives that document the voices, lives, and events of their communities and to ensure this material is permanently available to patrons, students, scholars, and citizens.
Community Webs, the Internet Archive’s community history web and digital archiving program, is welcoming over 60 new members from across the US, Canada, and internationally. This new cohort is the first expansion of the Community Webs program outside of the United States and we are thrilled to be supporting the development of diverse, community-based web collections on an international scale.
Community Webs empowers cultural heritage organizations to collaborate with their communities to build web and digital archives of primary sources documenting local history and culture, especially collections inclusive of voices typically underrepresented in traditional memory collections. The program achieves this mission by providing its members with free access to the Archive-It web archiving service, digital preservation and digitization services, and technical support and training in topics such as web archiving, community outreach, and digital preservation. The program also offers resources to support a local history archiving community of practice and to facilitate scholarly research.
New Community Webs member Karen Ng, Archivist at Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), BC, Canada, notes that the program offers a way to capture community-generated online content in a context where many of the Nation’s records are held by other institutions. “The Squamish Nation community is active in creating and documenting language, traditional knowledge, and histories. Now more than ever in the digital age, it is imperative that these stories and histories be captured and stored in accessible ways for future generations.”
Similarly, for Maryna Chernyavska, Archivist at the Kule Folklore Centre in Edmonton, Canada, the program will allow the Centre to continue building relationships with community members and organizations. “Being able to assist local heritage organizations with web archiving will help us empower these communities to preserve their heritage based on their values and priorities, but also according to professional standards.”
The current expansion of the program was made possible in part by generous funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, which supports the growth of Community Webs to new public libraries in the US. Additional funding provided by the Internet Archive allows the program to reach cultural heritage organizations in Canada and beyond. This newest cohort brings the total number of participants in Community Webs to over 150 organizations, a ten-fold increase since the program’s inception in 2017. For a full list of new participants, see below. The program continues to add members – if your institution is interested in joining, please view our open calls for applications and please make your favorite local memory organization aware of the opportunity.
Programming for the new cohort is underway and these members are already diving into the program’s educational resources and familiarizing themselves with the technical aspects of web archiving and digital preservation. We kicked things off recently with introductory Zoom sessions, where participants met one another and shared their organizations’ missions, communities served and goals for membership in the program. Online training modules, developed by staff at the Internet Archive and the Educopia Institute, went live for new members at the beginning of September. And our new cohort joined our existing Community Webs partners at our virtual Partner Meeting on September 22nd.
We are thrilled to see the program continuing to grow and we look forward to working with our newest cohort. A warm welcome to the following new Community Webs members!
Canada:
Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute
Age of Sail Museum and Archives
Ajax Public Library
Blue Mountains Public Library – Craigleith Heritage Depot
Canadian Friends Historical Association
Charlotte County Archives
City of Kawartha Lakes Public Library
Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County
Confluence Concerts | Toronto Performing Arts Archives
Edson and District Historical Society – Galloway Station Museum & Archives
Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Association
Ex Libris Association
Fishing Lake Métis Settlement Public Library
Frog Lake First Nations Library
Goulbourn Museum
Grimsby Public Library
Hamilton Public Library
Kule Folklore Centre
Maskwacis Cultural College
Meaford Museum
Milton Public Library
Mission Folk Music Festival
Nipissing Nation Kendaaswin
North Lanark Regional Museum
Northern Ontario Railroad Museum and Heritage Centre
Parkwood National Historic Site
Regina Public Library
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) Archives
Société historique du Madawaska Inc.
St. Clair West Oral History Project
Temagami First Nation Public Library
The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives
The Historical Society of Ottawa
Thunder Bay Museum
Tk’emlups te Secwepemc
International:
Biblioteca Nacional Aruba
Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica (Taiwan)
Mbube Cultural Preservation Foundation (Nigeria)
National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS) (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago)
United States:
Abilene Public Library
Ashland City Library
Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
Charlotte County Libraries & History
Choctaw Cultural Center
Cultura Local ABI
DC History Center
Forsyth County Public Library
Fort Worth Public Library
Inuit Circumpolar Council – Alaska
Menominee Tribal Archives
Mineral Point Library Archives
Obama Hawaiian Africana Museum
Scott County Library System
South Sioux City Public Library
St. Louis Media History Foundation
Tacoma Public Library
The History Project
The Seattle Public Library
Tipp City Public Library
University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu
Wilmington Public Library District
Congrats to these new partners! We are excited to have you on board.
The Internet Archive is seeking applicants for its next cohort of Community Webs! We are thrilled to announce that the program is now open to additional cultural heritage organizations in the US, as well as any public library or local memory organization in Canada and internationally.
Community Webs provides infrastructure and services, training and education, and professional community cultivation for public libraries and cultural heritage organizations to document local history and the lives of their communities. Launched in the US in 2017 with kickoff funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Community Webs began expanding nationally in 2020 with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Building on the program’s success and continued growth, Internet Archive is now supporting expansion of the program into Canada and to the international community, and is accepting applications for our next cohort kicking off in late-Summer 2021. The deadline for applications is August 2, 2021.
The program offers a unique opportunity for participating organizations to build capacity in digital collecting. Community Webs participants work alongside peer organizations and with their local communities to document the lives of their citizens, marginalized voices, and groups often absent from the historical record. All Community Webs participants receive:
A guaranteed multi-year free subscription to the Archive-It web archiving service, which includes perpetual storage and access provided by the Internet Archive.
Access to additional Internet Archive non-profit services, such as digitization and digital preservation, either for free (as funding allows) or at or below actual cost.
Training and educational resources related to digital collections, web archiving, digital preservation, and other topics, as well as access to a cohort community pursuing similar work and to networking spaces, events, and knowledge sharing platforms.
The option to leverage program partnerships and integrations to include community web archives in other aggregators or access platforms beyond Internet Archive.
The program currently includes over 100 public libraries from across the United States. These organizations have collectively archived over 70 terabytes of web-based community heritage materials. Some highlights include:
Archived web page: Reporte Hispano, April 6, 2021. New Brunswick Free Public Library. Spanish Newspapers collection.
Archived web page: KC Friends of Alvin Ailey, January 10, 2021. Kansas City Public Library, Arts & Culture collection.
The benefits of the program are wide-ranging and impactful for both participants and their communities. As Community Webs member Makiba J. Foster of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Broward County, Florida stated during a recent Community Webs event, Archiving the Black Diaspora, “Community Webs provided me with the training, they provided me with the cohort support, […] provided me with services, and particularly it helped to develop an expertise for me in terms of creating collections of historically significant web materials documenting our local communities.” The program “allowed me to start a project of recovery and documentation of digitally born content related to the Black experience.” More information about what Foster and other Community Webs members are up to can be found by viewing our recent program announcements.
Find out more about the program and keep up to date by visiting the Community Webs website. Apply online today and spread the word!
The Internet Archive’s Community Webs Program provides training and education, infrastructure and services, and professional community cultivation for public librarians across the country to document their local history and the lives of their patrons. Following our recent announcement of the program’s national expansion, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are excited to welcome the first class of 50+ new public libraries to the program. This brings the current number of new and returning Community Webs participants to 90+ libraries from 33 states and 3 US territories. This diverse group of organizations includes multiple state libraries representing their regions, as well as a mix of large metropolitan library systems, small libraries in rural areas, and libraries like the Feleti Barstow Public Library in American Samoa. All will be working to document their communities, with a particular focus on archiving materials from traditionally underrepresented groups.
The new cohort class kicked off with virtual introductory events in mid-March, where participants met one another and shared stories about their communities and their goals for preserving and providing access to local history materials. Member libraries are currently receiving training in topics such as collection development and starting to build digital collections that reflect local diversity, events, and culture.
Program participant Kathleen Pickering, Director of the Belen Public Library and Harvey House Museum in Belen, New Mexico notes that their library “is committed to free and open-source electronic resources for our patrons, especially given the low-income status of many of our residents” and Community Webs will help further that goal. Similarly, new cohort member Aaron Ramirez of Pueblo City-County Library District (PCCLD)found Community Webs to be a great fit for existing institutional goals and initiatives. “PCCLD’s five-year strategic plan directs us to embrace local cultures, to include individuals of all skill levels and physical abilities, and to enrich established partnerships and collaborations. The groups that have not seen themselves in our archives will find through this project PCCLD’s intention and means to listen and go forward as allies and as a resource of support, rather than an institution serving only the affluent.”
Makiba J. Foster
Makiba J. Foster, Manager of The African American Research Library and Cultural Center of Broward County, Florida pointed out that “as content becomes increasingly digital, we need this opportunity to document the digital life and content of our community which includes a diverse representation of the Black Diaspora.” Makiba was a member of the original Community Webs cohort in a previous position at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library, and recently presented on her work archiving the black diaspora to a group of more than 200 attendees.
The Community Webs Program is continuing to grow towards the milestone of over 150 participating libraries across the United States and will soon announce another call for applicants for a U.S. cohort starting in late summer. The program also is beginning to expand internationally, starting in Canada, exploring the addition of other types of libraries and cultural heritage organizations, and expanding its suite of training and services available to participants. Expect more news on these initiatives soon.
Welcome to our new cohort of Community Webs libraries! The full list of new members:
Alamogordo Public Library (New Mexico)
Amelia Island Museum of History (Florida)
ART | library deco (Texas)
Asbury Park Public Library (New Jersey)
Atlanta History Center (Georgia)
Bartholomew County Public Library (Indiana)
Bedford Public Library System (Virginia)
Belen Public Library and Harvey House Museum (New Mexico)
Bensenville Community Public Library (Illinois)
Biblioteca Municipal Aurea M. Pérez (Puerto Rico)
Carbondale Public Library (Illinois)
Cedar Mill & Bethany Community Libraries (Oregon)
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (North Carolina)
Chicago Public Library (Illinois)
City Archives & Special Collections, New Orleans Public Library (Louisiana)
Dayton Metro Library (Ohio)
Elba Public Library (Alabama)
Essex Library Association (Connecticut)
Everett Public Library (Washington)
Feleti Barstow Public Library (American Samoa)
Forsyth County Public Library (North Carolina)
Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library (Connecticut)
Heritage Public Library (Virginia)
Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (Alabama)
James Blackstone Memorial Library (Connecticut)
Jefferson Parish Library (Louisiana)
Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (Virginia)
Laramie County Library System (Wyoming)
Lawrence Public Library (Massachusetts)
Los Angeles Public Library (California)
Mill Valley Public Library, Lucretia Little History Room (California)
Missoula Public Library (Montana)
Niagara Falls Public Library (New York)
Pueblo City-County Library District (Colorado)
Rochester Public Library (New York)
Santa Cruz Public Libraries (California)
South Pasadena Public Library (California)
State Library of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania)
Tangipahoa Parish Library (Louisiana)
The African American Research Library and Cultural Center (Florida)
Local history collections are necessary to understanding the life and culture of a community. As methods for sharing information have shifted towards the web, there are many more avenues for community members to document diverse experiences. Public libraries play a critical role in building community-oriented archives and these collections are particularly important in recording the impact of unprecedented events on the lives of local citizens.
Last week, we announced a major national expansion of our Community Webs program providing infrastructure, services, and training to public librarians to archive local history as documented on the web… We now invite public libraries in the United States and cultural heritage organizations in U.S. territories to apply to join the Community Webs program. Participants in the program receive free web archiving and technical services, education, professional development, and funding to build community history web archives, especially collections documenting the lives of patrons and communities traditionally under-represented in the historical record.
If you are a public librarian interested in joining the Community Webs program please review the full call for applications and the program FAQs. Online applications are being accepted through Sunday, January 31, 2021.
“Whether documenting the indie music scene of the 1990s, researching the history of local abolitionists and formerly enslaved peoples, or helping patrons research the early LGBT movement, I am frequently reminded of what was not saved or is not physically present in our collections. These gaps or silences often reflect subcultures in our community.” – Dylan Gaffney, Forbes Library, in Northampton, MA
The program is seeking public libraries to join a diverse network of 150+ organizations that are:
Documenting local history by saving web-published sites, stories and community engagement on the web.
Growing their professional skills and increasing institutional technical capacity by engaging in a supportive network of peer organizations pursuing this work.
Building a public understanding of web archiving as a practice and its importance to preserving 21st century community history and underrepresented voices.
Current Community Webs cohort members have created nearly 300 publicly available local history web archive collections on topics ranging from COVID-19, to local arts and culture, to 2020 local and U.S. elections. Collecting the web-published materials of local organizations, movements and individuals is often the primary way to document their presence for future historians.
“During the summer of 2016, Baton Rouge witnessed the shooting of Alton Sterling, the mass shooting of Baton Rouge law enforcement, and the Great Flood of 2016. While watching these events unfold from our smartphones and computers, we at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library realized this information might be in jeopardy of never being acquired and preserved due to a shift in the way information is being created and disseminated.” – Emily Ward, East Baton Rouge Parish Library
Benefits of participation in Community Webs include:
A three-year subscription to the Archive-It web archiving service.
Funding to support travel to a full-day Community Webs National Symposium (projected for 2021 and in 2022) and other professional development opportunities.
Extensive training and educational resources provided by professional staff.
Membership in an active and diverse community of public librarians across the country.
Options to increase access (and discoverability) to program collections via hubs, such as DPLA.
Funding to support local outreach, public programming, and community collaborations.
Please feel free to email us with any questions and be sure to apply by Sunday, January 31, 2021.
More than ever, the lives of communities are documented online. The web remains a vital resource for traditionally under-represented groups to write and share about their lives and experiences. Preserving this web-published material, in turn, allows libraries to build more expansive, inclusive, and community-oriented archival collections.
In 2017, the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service launched the program, “Community Webs: Empowering Public Libraries to Create Community History Web Archives.” The program provides training, professional development, cohort building, and technical services for public librarians to curate community archives of websites, social media, and online material documenting the experiences of their patrons, especially those often underrepresented in traditional physical archives. Since its launch, the program has grown to include 40 public libraries in 21 states that have built almost 300 collections documenting local civic life, especially of marginalized groups, creating an archive totaling over 50 terabytes and tens of millions of individual digital documents, images, audio-video, and more. The program received additional funding in 2019 to continue its work and focus on strategic planning, partnering with the Educopia Institute to ensure the growth and sustainability of the program and the cohort.
We are excited to announce that Community Webs has received $1,130,000 in funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for “Community Webs: A National Network of Public Library Web Archives Documenting Local History & Underrepresented Groups,” an nationwide expansion of the program to include a minimum of 2 public libraries in each of the 50 United States, plus additional local history organizations in U.S territories, for a total of 150-200 participating public libraries and heritage organizations. Participants will receive web archiving and access services, training and education, and funds to promote and pursue their community archiving. The Community Webs National Network will also make the resulting public library local history community web archives available to scholars through specialized access tools and datasets, partner with affiliated national discovery and digital collections platforms such as DPLA, and build partnerships and collaborations with state and regional groups advancing local history digital preservation efforts. We thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support to grow this program nationwide and empower hundreds of public librarians to build archives that elevate the voices, lives, and events of their underrepresented communities and ensure this material is permanently available to patrons, students, scholars, and citizens.
Over the course of the Community Webs program, participating public libraries have created diverse collections on a wide range of topics, often in collaboration with members of their local communities. Examples include:
Community Webs members have created collections related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s “Novel Coronavirus COVID-19” collection which focuses on “the African diasporan experiences of COVID-19 including racial disparities in health outcomes and access, the impact on Black-owned businesses, and cultural production.” Athens Regional Library System created a collection of “Athens, Georgia Area COVID-19 Response” which focuses on the social, economic and health impacts of COVID-19 on the local community, with specific attention on community efforts to support frontline workers. A recent American Libraries article featured the COVID archiving work of public libraries.
Columbus Metropolitan Library’s archive of “Immigrant Experience”, a collection of websites on the activities, needs, and culture of immigrant communities in Central Ohio.
Birmingham Public Library’s “LGBTQ in Alabama” collection “documenting the history and experiences of the LGBTQ community in Alabama.”
Community Webs public librarians at IA HQ
We look forward to expanding the Community Webs program nationwide in order to enable hundreds of public libraries to continue to build web collections documenting their communities, especially in these historic times.
We expect to put out a Call for Applications in early December for public libraries to join Community Webs. Please pass along this opportunity to your local public library. For more information on the program, check out our website or email us with questions.
