How will future generations understand the COVID-19 pandemic and learn from the lessons we watch unfold online on a daily basis? What happens to all that information (and misinformation) –health advice, government guidelines, heated debates – published on the web as the years pass by?

The Archive of Tomorrow project welcomes you to join us for a half-day of discussion and consultation on the archiving of 10,000 websites in the UK Web Archive on the topic of health information. A 12-month pilot project funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the project aims to build an evidence base about health information shared online to support current and future research on public health, the spread of mis/information, community responses to the pandemic and lockdown, and other potential research topics. The project team – including NLS, Cambridge University Library, Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, and the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh – invites participants to learn about the project and feedback on how the collection might best support different research approaches.

After a briefing on the project and its aims, participants will be assigned to breakout groups where they will respond to the vital but challenges questions at the centre of this project – how do we describe archived websites that may contain offensive or inaccurate information? How do we contextualise archived websites so that current and future users can evaluate relevance and reliability? The programme will also include overviews of recent research using web resources or focusing on health information online. Before the workshop closes, the project team wants to hear from participants about potential research questions and collecting approaches that might inform this project as it develops.

Programme

09:30 Welcome & Brief Introduction to Archive of Tomorrow – Joseph Marshall (Associate Director of Collections Management, National Library of Scotland)

09:45 Overview of Workshop & Welcome from Edinburgh – Sara Day Thomson (Digital Archivist, University of Edinburgh)

10.00 Research Case Study, History of the British welfare state and methodologies around the history of the World Wide Web by Gareth Millward, University of Southern Denmark (SDU)

10.15 Research Case Study, Conceptualising the Challenges of Engaging National Web Archives for Digital Research by Jessica Ogden, Bristol Digital Futures Institute, University of Bristol

10.30 Q&A – Sara Day Thomson

11.00 Feedback (Mentimeter) – User Needs Analysis / Proposed Research Questions / Expressions of Interest – Sara Day Thomson

11.15 Comfort Break

11.30 Challenges to Archiving Health Information and Misinformation on the Web – Alice Austin (University of Edinburgh), Leontien Talboom (Cambridge University Library), Cui Cui (Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University)

12.00 Breakout Rooms – Led by Project Team Members

Example discussion questions: How should misinformation be documented? Should archives collect misinformation? How can web archives make collections more accessible and usable? What types of research questions do web archives support?

12.45 Feedback to Group – Sara Day Thomson

13:00 Closing Keynote Address – Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh, Director of Centre for Data, Culture, and Society, and Research Director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute

13.25 Closing Remarks – Sara Day Thomson

13.30 Close

More about the project: https://www.nls.uk/about-us/working-with-others/archive-of-tomorrow/

Image description: Postcard of staff in the skin wards at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, c.1906. Image courtesy of Lothian Health Services Archive, Edinburgh University Library, ref. P/PL1/S/014

Archive of Tomorrow – Health (Mis)Information on the Web