Tamiment Library Web Collection on Individuals

Call Number

WEB.ARC.001

Date

2007-ongoing

Creator

Tamiment Library

Extent

19 websites

Language of Materials

Websites are mostly in English, with some contents of websites in Spanish and in other languages.

Abstract

The Tamiment Library Web Collection on Individuals, first began by Tamiment in 2007, includes archived websites of individuals connected with the labor movement, trade unionism, radical politics, feminism, civil rights, social justice, prisoner rights, economic justice, radical art and music, alternative press, gay rights, anarchism, and peace and other movements. Website contain a variety of formats and materials, including pdfs, images, multimedia, event listings, blogs, and other web-based media.

Historical/Biographical Note

Tamiment Library, New York University began web archiving in 2007 as part of a grant given by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIPP) of the Library of Congress. As most unions, left movements, progressive organizations, and others stop creating ephemeral material and paper based collections and move most of their administrative and informational material to the web, Tamiment continued to document the changing face of the labor and left movement into the web era. Tamiment uses the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service (WAS) as their tool to capture and preserve websites. WAS was created in 2007 and Tamiment is one of its earliest partners. The California Digital Library provides the storage and infrastructure for the project.

Arrangement

Websites are arranged alphabetically.

Scope and Content Note

The Tamiment Library Web Collection on Individuals, first began by Tamiment in 2007, archives websites of individuals connected with the labor movement, trade unionism, radical politics, feminism, civil rights, social justice, prisoner rights, economic justice, radical art and music, alternative press, gay rights, anarchism, and peace and other movements. This is an assembled collection, websites are chosen by the archivists.

These websites contain a huge variety of media, which include videos, pdfs, blog postings (including Tumblr and Wordpress blogs), petitions, news feeds, audio, message boards, and other media. These websites often act to document and update upon the individuals' activities, schedule upcoming events, build awareness of their causes or work, and information on projects the individuals are working on. Websites include writings and articles by individuals, examples of their work, or other activities.

The web collection documents the publicly available content of the web page, it does not archive material that is password protected or blocked due to robot txt exclusions. Although Tamiment attempts to archive the entirety of a website, certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. This can include videos (Youtube, Vimeo, or otherwise), pdfs (including Scribd or another pdf reader), rss feeds/plug-ins (including twitter), commenting platforms (disqus, facebook), presi, images, or anything that is not native to the site.

Subjects

Access Restrictions

Archived websites are open to researchers without restrictions. Archived websites are made publically available 6 months after their initial capture.

Use Restrictions

Tamiment does not own the copyright to these websites. Copyright to these websites resides with each website's author. Tamiment Library and Web Archiving Service (WAS) operate in observance with Section 108 Study Group's Report on Web Archiving. Tamiment archives websites for preservation and research purposes only. Tamiment respects robot txt exclusions and requests from websites with robot txt exclusions to allow our crawler to capture their website. Tamiment will also honor a website owner's request to remove a website from the collection.

Preferred Citation

"Page Title." Archived month/day/year. Tamiment Library Web Collection on Individuals, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University. ArchivalURL. (Accessed month/day/year).

Existence and Location of Originals

Clicking on the links provided in the container list will take the user to the Web Archiving Service (WAS) page for the website. Sometimes the original website is still available on the live web and the original URL may be available. To get to the original web page, click the live link provided in the "Latest Starting URL" field on the WAS page.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Websites are selected by archivists and captured through the use of the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service (WAS). WAS uses a web crawler to copy the website at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy of the website.

Custodial History

The archived websites were migrated from the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service to the Internet Archive's Archive-It Service in November 2015. The links to California Digital Library were removed in October 2017.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Due to technical or privacy issues, archived websites may not be exact copies of the original website at the time of the web crawl. Certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. This can include videos (including Youtube and Vimeo), pdfs (including Scribd or another pdf reader), rss feeds/plug-ins (including Twitter), commenting platforms (disqus, Facebook), presi, images, or anything that is not native to the site. Other parts of websites that the crawler has difficulty capturing includes Javascript, streaming content, database-driven content, and highly interactive content. Robot txt exclusions also change the formatting of websites from their original display, websites with robot txt exclusions often display as an index.

Keyword and file-type search are also available to archived websites through the Web Archiving Service (WAS). To search for keywords within archived websites, click a site name link in the container list. From that page, click the "search" tab on the top left corner. From the search page, you can search by keyword, URL, and file type across all captures of one site or all the sites in the project.

Take Down Policy

Tamiment respects robot txt exclusions and requests from websites with robot txt exclusions to allow our crawler to capture their website. Tamiment will also honor the website owner's request to remove their website from the collection. To request a site removal, please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu

Related Archival Material

Tamiment Library Web Collection on Labor Unions
Tamiment Library Web Collection on Organizations
Printed Ephemera Collection on Individuals (PE 030)

Accruals

In general, crawls of sites are added quarterly. New sites are added to finding aids upon completion of 6 month embargo.

Collection processed by

Nicole Greenhouse in compliance with DACS and Tamiment Required Elements for Archival Description

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:41:48 -0400.

Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Language: Description is written in: English, Latin script.

Processing Information

Tamiment Library uses the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service (WAS) to capture websites for historical purposes. Tamiment archivists select websites for capture based on Tamiment's collecting policy. After the site is added, the title of the site is sometimes changed to better reflect the name of the organization/project/event/site.

Sites are copied by what are commonly known as spiders, robots, or crawlers to index the website. WAS uses the Heritrix web crawler to copy (or capture) the website at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy of the website. In general, the host page of website is captured for up to 36 hours. The initial capture of a website often includes the archived version of websites that have been linked to by the host website. Websites are crawled quarterly, unless contemporary events cause rapid change to content on a website.

The archivist describes each site using subject headings, a brief description of the site and its contents, and tags. WAS arranges the websites alphabetically and preserves the websites.

In 2014, finding aids were created from the 23 original projects. Original projects were collected by topic and continue to be maintained by the archivists. Three finding aids were created based on Tamiment Library's Printed Ephemera collection categories, to provide better access across websites and collections in Tamiment Library. These finding aids were created using the XML export tool in WAS and manipulated to create DACS-compliant EAD finding aids.

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives