Data produced online is created and destroyed at an alarming rate, including social media posts, websites killed through linkrot, and many of the nearly one million memes shared daily on the world wide web.
Join In this event, Dr Arran Rees as he shares findings from his research into the preservation of the ‘Absolute Unit’ meme to demonstrate the importance of allowing space for humour in the archive, and the practical challenges faced when doing so. Then, UK Government Web Archivist Jake Bickford will ground the discussion with a talk focused on digital preservation at The National Archives, reflecting on the connection between Arran’s research and our everyday activities, while also sharing some of the weird and wonderful digital records in our collection.
Our UK Government Web Archive contains thousands of complex assets that require strong computational skills to preserve, with resources covering a range of human interactions and emotions recorded forever on the internet. This includes things we find funny now, but may find absurd next week (see Cheggar’s Chip Tune in our own UK Government Web Archive). Through examining how we preserve these unique digital assets, and why, join us as we explore the complicated world of archiving born digital data and making these records accessible for future generations of researchers.
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Image: Absolute Unit Twitter Meme. An internet meme composed of a black and white photograph of a large ram (Science Museum Group, 2022-296). Museum of English Rural Life, 2021.
