Zoom In: LLILAS Benson’s Virtual Workshops with Latin American partners

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It was the Summer of Zoom. Anyone whose job quickly morphed from being in-person to being entirely online can relate to (a) isolation, (b) feeling overwhelmed, (c) video-conference overload, or (d) some or all of the above. Yet the ability to engage with other people on platforms such as Zoom has allowed some important work to move forward. Such was the case with the recent workshop series conducted with archival partners in Latin America by the LLILAS Benson Digital Initiatives team (LBDI).

The workshops were originally planned to occur in person during a week-long retreat in Antigua, Guatemala, with a group of Latin American partner archives. As an essential activity of the two-year Mellon Foundation grant titled Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archiving Community, the week would provide an opportunity for partners from Guatemala,  El Salvador, Colombia, and Brazil to come together for training, share resources and knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss challenges they face in their work.

The Mellon grant, covering work between January 2020 and June 2022, provides funding to support post-custodial* archival work with five partner archives, some of whom are already represented in the Latin American Digital Initiatives repository, which emphasizes collections documenting human rights issues and underrepresented communities.

Embroidery from the Bordados collection, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). This embroidery from Comunidad de Santa Marta, Honduras, depicts refugee life, including different kinds of labor. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/mupi03

The Covid-19 pandemic demanded that the digital initiatives team quickly pivot in order to keep the project moving forward on the grant timeline. For the resulting workshop series, offered via Zoom, members of the LBDI team prepared extensive training videos, designed Q&A sessions, and arranged for sessions with guest experts. Topics included grant writing, budgeting, archival processing, metadata, equipment selection, digital preservation, and digital scholarship, among others. 

Over the course of five weeks this past summer, workshop participants met twice a week with LBDI staff members Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert Palacios, and Karla Roig, as well as LLILAS Benson grants manager Megan Scarborough. All sessions were conducted in Spanish with closed-caption translations into Portuguese (or vice versa) provided by Susanna Sharpe, the LLILAS Benson communications coordinator. Additional presenters included Carla Alvarez, the U.S. Latinx archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection, and photo preservation experts Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, ENCRyM, Mexico).

Cover, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, by Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. The book is an account of the 25-year history of the movement against hydroelectric dams in the Vale do Ribeira region of São Paulo and Paraná states in Brazil. EACCONE, Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR collection. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/eaacone01

Partner archives who were able to participate in the online workshop series included Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, El Salvador), Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, Guatemala City, Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia), and Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, Brazil).

Despite the physical distance, workshop participants clearly valued the opportunity to come together and learn from one another, especially during the pandemic, which has had such profound effects on daily life as well as work. The increased isolation, repression, and attacks against communities that have accompanied the pandemic also underscored for partners the urgency of preserving their communities’ documentation to support current struggles for recognition and respect of basic human rights, and to prevent future efforts to erase or deny ongoing violence and injustice. This shared commitment fostered a sense of solidarity and mutual support among participants.

Photographs, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia). This photograph was taken at a meeting of the Yurumangí River community advisory general assembly. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/en/pcn01

“For our team, it was an enriching experience that allowed us to reflect, as part of a multinational group, on the achievements and expectations of the LLILAS Benson Mellon project,” reported Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (aka Santiago) of MUPI, who also remarked on the opportunity to get to know the work of partner archives, “and to learn of their challenges with conservation and diffusion of their respective collections.”

Carolina Rendón, one of two participants from ODHAG’s Centro de la Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi, expressed how the day-to-day burdens of the pandemic were lightened by the opportunity to meet with others: “It was very good to be in spaces with others who work in different archives across Latin America. The pandemic has been heavy. During the course of the workshops, we passed through several stages—lockdown, fear, horror at the deaths,  . . . . I appreciate getting to know, even virtually, people who work in archives in other countries.”

For the LLILAS Benson team, the positive comments, and the general feeling of gratitude for the solidarity of online gatherings, offset the heavy lifting of preparing multiple training videos per week in Spanish, with texts quickly and expertly translated to Portuguese by collaborator Tereza Braga. In words of David A. Bliss, digital processing archivist, “The biggest challenge was distilling a huge amount of technical information down to its most important elements and communicating these as clearly as possible in Spanish.”

PCN digitization project coordinator Marta and Latin American Metadata Librarian Itza work together during a 2018 visit to refolder and inventory PCN collection materials (Photo: Anthony Dest)

Bliss also alluded to the fact that the partners themselves are a diverse group with different backgrounds, needs, and types of archives: “Some of our partners have been running digitization programs for years, but for others the information was all new, so I worked hard to strike a balance between the two using visual aids and clear definitions for technical terms.”

One of the most rewarding aspects of the workshop series was knowing that archivists and activists who work to preserve important records of memory in the area of human rights were able to come together, albeit virtually, to share their work and their perspectives with one another. As Bliss put it, “Ordinarily, we work individually with each partner organization to help them manage their digitization project, with the goal of gathering all of their collections together in LADI. But many of our partners don’t just hold collections of historical documents; they’re engaged in ongoing struggles for their communities. They’re far more equipped to help one another strategize and succeed in that work than we are, so giving them the space to form those direct connections with one another is really important. It’s also very validating for us, because it’s been one of our goals for years now: we want to be just one part of a network of partners, not at the center of it.”


* Post-custodial archiving is a process whereby sometimes vulnerable archives are preserved digitally and the digital versions made accessible worldwide, thus increasing access to the materials while ensuring they remain in the custody and care of their community of origin. LLILAS Benson is a pioneer in this practice.


Dando um Zoom: As Oficinas Virtuais da LLILAS Benson e Arquivos Parceiros na América Latina

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Traduzido ao português por Tereza Braga

Esse foi o Verão do Zoom nos Estados Unidos. Qualquer pessoa cujo emprego tenha passado de presencial para quase totalmente virtual nesse curto espaço de tempo já sabe como é (a) o isolamento, (b) a sensação constante de que não vai dar conta das coisas, (c) a overdose de videoconferências, ou (d) pelo menos uma das opções acima, senão todas ao mesmo tempo. Mesmo assim, a possibilidade de interagir com outras pessoas em plataformas tipo Zoom acabou nos permitindo avançar em certas áreas bem importantes. Esse foi o caso da recente série de oficinas conduzidas pela equipe de Iniciativas Digitais da LLILAS Benson (LBDI) com suas entidades arquivísticas parceiras na América Latina.

As oficinas foram originalmente concebidas para acontecer presencialmente durante um retiro de uma semana para todo o grupo de arquivos latino-americanos parceiros. O local escolhido foi Antigua, na Guatemala. Como atividade essencial da grant de dois anos da Fundação Mellon, intitulada Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archiving Community (Criação de uma Comunidade Arquivística Pós-Custodial Latino-Americana), a ideia era usar essa semana para criar uma oportunidade especial para essas entidades, cujas sedes são a Guatemala, El Salvador, Colômbia e Brasil. O retiro proporcionaria várias sessões de treinamento, intercâmbio de recursos e conhecimentos, troca de ideias e discussões sobre desafios que elas enfrentam em seus trabalhos.

Coleção Bordados, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). Este bordado da Comunidad de Santa Marta, Honduras, descreve a vida no refúgio, incluindo vários tipos de trabalho. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/mupi03

A grant da Mellon é para o período de janeiro de 2020 a junho de 2022 e subsidia os trabalhos arquivísticos pós-custodiais* executados em parceria com cinco arquivos selecionados, alguns dos quais já se encontram representados no repositório da Latin American Digital Initiatives. Esse repositório enfatiza coleções que documentem temas de direitos humanos e comunidades subrepresentadas.  

A pandemia do Covid-19 exigiu que a equipe de iniciativas digitais começasse a se articular e tomasse decisões rápidas para manter o ritmo do projeto no âmbito do cronograma da grant. O resultado foi essa série de oficinas oferecidas via Zoom, que exigiu dos membros da equipe LBDI a produção de vídeos completos de treinamento, concepção de sessões Q&A e agendamento de sessões com especialistas convidados. Os tópicos eram a montagem e redação de grants, preparo de orçamentos, processamento arquivístico, metadados, seleção de equipamentos, preservação digital e formação em tecnologia digital, entre outros.

Durante cinco semanas desse último verão americano, os participantes da oficina se reuniram duas vezes com Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert Palacios e Karla Roig, todos membros da equipe da LBDI, com a presença adicional de Megan Scarborough, administradora de grants da LLILAS Benson. Todas as sessões foram conduzidas em espanhol com tradução legendada para o português (ou vice-versa) a cargo de Susanna Sharpe, coordenadora de comunicações da LLILAS Benson. Outros apresentadores foram Carla Alvarez, arquivista U.S. Latinx da Benson Latin American Collection, e duas especialistas em preservação de fotografias, Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art) e María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escola Nacional de Conservação, Restauração e Museografia, ou ENCRyM, no México).

Capa, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, por Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. Livro sobre os 25 anos do MOAB, ou Movimento dos Ameaçados por Barragens na região do Vale do Ribeira (SP, PR). EACCONE, Coleção Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/eaacone01

Outros arquivos parceiros que conseguiram participar da série de oficinas online foram o  Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, em El Salvador), Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, na Cidade de Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, em Buenaventura, na Colômbia), e Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, no Brasil).

Apesar da distância física, ficou claro o alto valor atribuído pelos participantes a essa oportunidade de se reunir e aprender uns com os outros, especialmente durante uma pandemia que tem tido efeitos tão profundos na vida de tantos e no trabalho diário de todos nós. A pandemia ainda veio acompanhada de um forte isolamento, de ações de repressão e de crescentes ataques a certas comunidades. Esses fatores enfatizaram mais ainda, para as entidades parceiras, a urgência de preservar as documentações de suas comunidades não só para apoiar as lutas atuais por reconhecimento e respeito a direitos humanos básicos mas, também, para impedir iniciativas futuras que visem eliminar a memória ou negar a existência de violências e injustiças que sabemos vêm sendo cometidas. Esse compromisso compartilhado trouxe um grande senso de solidariedade para os participantes e um desejo de apoio mútuo.

Fotografias, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Colombia). Esta foto foi tomada numa reunião da assambleia geral do conselho comunitário do Rio Yurumangí. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/pt-br/pcn01

“Para o nosso time, foi uma experiência enriquecedora que nos permitiu refletir, como parte de um grupo multinacional, sobre as conquistas e expectativas do projeto LLILAS Benson Mellon”, relatou Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (conhecido como “Santiago”), do MUPI, que também ressaltou como positiva a oportunidade de conhecer de perto o trabalho dos arquivos parceiros “e entender os desafios que eles enfrentam com a conservação e difusão de suas respectivas coleções”.

Carolina Rendón, um dos dois participantes do Centro de la Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi, do ODHAG, disse que os fardos diários da pandemia ficaram mais leves com a oportunidade de interagir com outras pessoas: “Foi muito bom estar no mesmo espaço, junto com gente que trabalha em diferentes arquivos espalhados pela América Latina. A pandemia tem sido muito dura. Durante as oficinas nós passamos por vários estágios, primeiro o lockdown, depois o medo, depois o horror diante de tantas mortes… Eu valorizo muito esse travar conhecimento, mesmo que virtualmente, com gente que trabalha em arquivos de outros países”.

Para a equipe da LLILAS Benson, os comentários positivos e a sensação geral de gratidão pela solidariedade dos encontros online foram uma compensação pelo trabalho árduo que foi preparar os diversos vídeos semanais de treinamento em espanhol, cujos roteiros iam sendo rapidamente traduzidos para o português pela nossa expert colaboradora Tereza Braga. Nas palavras de David A. Bliss, arquivista de processamento digital, “o maior desafio foi destilar uma quantidade gigantesca de dados técnicos para obter apenas os elementos mais importantes e comunicar esses elementos da maneira mais clara possível em espanhol”.

Marta, a coordenadora do projeto de digitalização do PCN (esquerda) trabalha com Itza, bibliotecária de metadados da LLILAS Benson, durante uma visita em 2018 para organizar e fazer inventário dos materiais na coleção PCN. (Foto: Anthony Dest)

David aludiu ainda ao fato de que as próprias entidades parceiras são um grupo bem diversificado, com formações, necessidades, e tipos de arquivos diferentes. “Algumas das nossas parceiras já rodam programas de digitalização há anos mas, para outras, as informações eram todas novas, então eu me dediquei muito para poder chegar a um equilíbrio entre os dois lados, usando recursos visuais e definições bem claras para os termos técnicos”, ele declarou. 

Um dos aspectos mais gratificantes da série foi constatar que é possível reunir profissionais arquivísticos e líderes ativistas, todos trabalhando para preservar registros importantes de memória no campo dos direitos humanos, em um só espaço, mesmo sendo um espaço virtual, para compartilhar seu trabalho e suas perspectivas e se enriquecerem mutuamente. David explicou isso dizendo que “o normal é trabalharmos individualmente com cada organização parceira para auxiliá-la a administrar seu projeto de digitalização, com a meta de capturar todas as coleções daquela entidade e reuní-las no LADI para incentivar usuários a estabelecer conexões entre elas. Mas muitas das nossas parceiras não se restringem à guarda de coleções de documentos históricos; elas estão engajadas em tempo real na luta em prol de suas comunidades. Elas são, portanto, muito melhor equipadas para ajudar uma à outra a traçar estratégias e conseguir êxito nesse trabalho do que nós. Sendo assim, dar a elas o espaço para formar essas conexões diretas umas com as outras é realmente importante. E isso é muito validador para nós também, porque essa tem sido uma das nossas metas há anos já: queremos ser apenas um elo de uma rede de parceiras; não queremos estar no centro da rede”.


* Arquivística pós-custodial é um processo utilizado para preservar digitalmente certos arquivos, muitos deles vulneráveis, e disponibilizar essas versões digitais para o mundo inteiro aumentando, assim, o acesso aos conteúdos e assegurando, ao mesmo tempo, que eles permaneçam sob a guarda e os cuidados de suas comunidades de origem. A LLILAS Benson é uma pioneira desta prática.

Haciendo Zoom: LLILAS Benson y sus Colaboradores Latinoamericanos se reúnen para talleres virtuales

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Traducido al español por Susanna Sharpe

Fue el verano de Zoom en Norteamérica, y quienes vieron su trabajo convertirse de repente en una actividad online, entienden lo que es sentir el aislamiento, el agobio y la sobrecarga de reuniones por video. Sin embargo, el contacto con los demás a través de plataformas como Zoom ha permitido que continúen proyectos importantes.

Tal fue el caso de la reciente serie de talleres producida por el equipo de Iniciativas Digitales LLILAS Benson con la participación de archivos colaboradores en Latinoamérica.

Originalmente, los talleres fueron programados para que se llevaran a cabo durante una semana en Antigua, Guatemala, en donde el equipo de LLILAS Benson se reuniría con los colaboradores latinoamericanos. La actividad era esencial para el proyecto titulado “Cultivando una comunidad archivística poscustodial latinoamericana”, patrocinado por la Fundación Mellon. La semana en Antigua hubiera sido una oportunidad para que los archivos colaboradores de Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia y Brasil pudieran obtener capacitación, compartir recursos, intercambiar ideas y discutir desafíos.

Fotografías, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Colombia). Asamblea general del consejo comunitario del río Yurumangí en la vereda de Juntas. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/pcn01

La beca Mellon patrocina trabajo que se llevará a cabo entre enero del 2020 y junio del 2022. Los fondos apoyan el trabajo archivístico poscustodial* con cinco archivos, algunos de los cuales ya están representados en el repositorio Iniciativas Digitales de América Latina (LADI por sus señas en inglés), el cual destaca colecciones que documentan los derechos humanos y comunidades menos representadas.

La pandemia de Covid-19 exigió que el equipo de Iniciativas Digitales (LBDI) cambiara de plan súbitamente para mantener la trayectoria planeada del proyecto. Así nació la serie de talleres en línea. Para desarrollarla y llevarla a cabo, el equipo preparó videos de capacitación, programó sesiones de discusión, y organizó presentaciones por expertas en conservación de fotos y archivística. Además de estos temas, se presentaron videos y charlas sobre cómo escribir propuestas para subvenciones, crear presupuestos, elaborar metadatos, escoger equipamiento para la digitalización, preservar objetos digitales y considerar futuras investigaciones digitales. 

Bordado que describe la vida cotidiana del refugio, representando las diferentes labores. Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI, San Salvador, El Salvador). https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/mupi03

Durante cinco semanas de talleres en junio y julio, representantes de archivos colaboradores se reunieron dos veces por semana con Theresa Polk, David Bliss, Itza Carbajal, Albert A. Palacios y Karla Roig del equipo LBDI, además de Megan Scarborough, la gerente de subvenciones para LLILAS Benson. Los talleres se ofrecieron en español con traducciones al portugués (y viceversa) a través de subtítulos simultáneos, hechos por Susanna Sharpe, la coordinadora de comunicaciones. Entre los presentadores invitados estaban Carla Alvarez, archivista de materiales de Latinas y Latinos en Estados Unidos; y dos especialistas en la preservación de fotografías, Diana Díaz (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) y María Estibaliz Guzmán (Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, ENCRyM, México).

Los archivos quienes pudieron participar en los talleres virtuales fueron el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (San Salvador, El Salvador), la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG, Guatemala, Guatemala), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia) y Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (EAACONE, Vale do Ribeira, Brasil).

Portada, MOAB: A Saga de um Povo, por Maria Aparecida Mendes Pinto. Este libro cuenta la historia de 25 años del MOAB, movimiento en contra de las grandes represas y proyectos hidroeléctricos en la región brasileña Vale do Ribeira (estados de São Paulo y Paraná). EACCONE, colección Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira SP/PR . https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/eaacone01

A pesar de la distancia, los/las participantes verdaderamente apreciaron la oportunidad para juntarse virtualmente y aprender unos/as de otros/as, especialmente durante la pandemia, que ha afectado profundamente tanto a la vida cotidiana como al trabajo. La pandemia ha sido acompañada por el aislamiento, la represión política y los ataques contra ciertas comunidades, subrayando la urgencia de preservar la documentación de estas comunidades vulnerables, para apoyar las luchas por el reconocimiento de, y el respecto por, los derechos humanos básicos, y para impedir que se borre o se niegue la existencia contínua de violencia e injusticia.

Este compromiso compartido por las y los participantes fomentó un sentido de solidaridad y apoyo mutuo entre los participantes.

“Para nuestro equipo fue una experiencia enriquecedora, que nos permitió reflexionar en el seno del grupo multinacional, sobre los alcances y expectativas sobre el nuevo proyecto Mellon con LLILAS Benson,” dijo Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, director del MUPI (también conocido como Santiago), quien también reconoció la oportunidad para “conocer más a profundidad sobre archivos socios de la iniciativa . . . y conocer las situaciones particulares de otros socios en sus retos de conservación y difusión de sus respectivos archivos.”

Para Carolina Rendón, una de las dos participantes del Centro de Memoria Monseñor Juan Gerardi (parte de ODHAG), las cargas diarias de la pandemia se hicieron un poco más leves por las reuniones: “Fue muy bueno estar en espacios donde se encontraban otras personas que trabajan en archivos en diferentes países de Latinoamérica. La pandemia ha sido algo pesado, mientras se daba el curso creo que pasamos por varias etapas, el cambio a un encierro, el miedo, el horror de los casos de muerte, los aprovechamientos políticos. . . . Valoro haber conocido, aunque sea virtualmente, a las personas que trabajan en archivos en otros países.”

Fotografías, Colección Dinámicas Organizativas del Pueblo Negro en Colombia, Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN, Buenaventura, Colombia). Asamblea general del consejo comunitario del río Yurumangí en la vereda de Juntas.. https://ladi.lib.utexas.edu/es/pcn01

Para el equipo de LLILAS Benson, los comentarios positivos y la gratitud en general por la solidaridad de las reuniones online fueron compensación por el trabajo intenso de preparar múltiples videos de capacitación en español cada semana, sus textos traducidos al portugués rápidamente, y con destreza, por la colaboradora Tereza Braga. Como dijo el archivista digital David A. Bliss, “El mayor reto fue de destilar una cantidad enorme de información técnica a sus elementos más importantes, y comunicarlas en español de la manera más clara posible.”

Bliss también aludió al hecho de que los colaboradores son un grupo diverso, con contextos y necesidades diferentes, cuyos archivos no son todos parecidos: “Algunos de nuestros compañeros han manejado programas de digitalización por muchos años, pero para otros la información era toda nueva. Así que traté de mantener un equilibrio entre los dos con el uso de visuales y definiciones claras para términos técnicos.”

A pesar de ser una experiencia virtual, uno de los aspectos más gratificantes de los talleres fue el hecho de ver a este grupo de archivistas y activistas que trabajan en la preservación de la memoria y la protección de los derechos humanos compartir su trabajo y sus perspectivas.

Marta, coordenadora del proyecto de digitalización de PCN, trabaja con bibliotecaria de metadata de LLILAS Benson, Itza, durante un proyecto en 2018 para reorganizar y hacer un inventario de materiales en la colección de PCN. (Foto: Anthony Dest)

Como lo expresó Bliss, “Normalmente, trabajamos individualmente con cada organización para ayudarles a manejar su proyecto de digitalización, con la meta de juntar todas sus colecciones en el sitio de LADI. Pero muchos de nuestros colaboradores no sólo tienen colecciones de documentos históricos, sino que están envueltos en luchas actuales para sus comunidades. Tienen mucho más que ofrecerse entre ellos para formular estrategias y obtener resultados. Así que es muy importante proveerles un espacio para establecer esas conexiones directas entre si. Esto valida lo que ha sido una de nuestras metas desde hace mucho: queremos ser sólo una parte de una red de colaboradores, no queremos ser central en ella.”


* El trabajo poscustodial es un proceso en que se hacen copias digitales de los archivos, a veces archivos vulnerables, para preservarlas de manera digital y hacerlas accesibles globalmente. Esto aumenta el acceso a los archivos mientras asegura que permanezcan en el custodio y bajo el cuidado de la comunidad de origen. LLILAS Benson es pionero en esta práctica.

Web Archiving Made Simple

The Simple Web Archiver—a straightforward, open source web archiving tool to create personal archives of websites and the files they host—has been published on GitHub under the GNU General Public License, allowing users to use and remix the tool with minimal limitations. The tool, built in Python, provides a GUI interface, and uses BeautifulSoup and wget to parse websites and download files, respectively. I created the tool as part of my work as the European Studies Librarian at the UT Libraries. 

Archiving websites is an important practice for anyone interested in preserving digital history. Digital media, and media online, is particularly vulnerable to being lost, as it is often ephemeral in nature and not preserved in an archival format. Saving born-digital materials complements the archiving, curation, and preservation of physical materials, and helps to ensure that internet-based ephemera will be preserved into the future.

Why use this tool?

This tool provides an easy way to create small, personal archives that live offline. While there are many useful web archiving tools available (listed below), this program fills a gap not addressed by existing solutions. Its scope is intentionally small: it aims to create low-memory- use archives for personal use, and to be as easy to use as possible so that users with limited technical knowledge can begin using it immediately, without a complicated setup process or learning curve.

The tool uses a GUI to make the tool very easy to use. Following the directions on the GitHub site allows one to set up the tool and begin using it almost instantly.  Another important aspect of this tool is the ease with which it can be modified, by those with some coding experience, to accomplish something else or adapt to the behavior of a certain site. One example of such remixing is this code to capture Omeka sites, specifically, downloading more of the site’s content than the Simple Web Archiver does by default.

Extant web archiving tools tend to accomplish different things than the Simple Web Archiver, and to encompass different scopes. Here is a brief review of other popular software:

Internet Archive – An excellent and easy-to-use tool, but the archives created are hosted online, on the Internet Archive’s servers. Also, not all files will be preserved when crawling a website (PDFs, for example, cannot be archived).

ArchiveIt: also from the Internet Archive, this is great for institutions who want online hosting. It operates on a paid model and, again, not ideal for individual researchers or archivists who want a quick, easy archive of a site and its files.

HTTrack: HTTrack is a free, offline browser utility. Per the tool’s website, it “allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure.” This is good for those who want a thorough, complete archive of a site, but is not geared toward quick, low-memory-use archives to be stored for personal use.

WarcIt – This tool is entirely programmatic, and only provides WARC (Web ARChive) files. There is no GUI available.

Archivebox – This tool is self-hosted, but programmatic. More robust than the Simple Web Archiver, but its features are not necessarily needed for quick, easy-to-setup or one-off archives. It does not save PDFs, or other files.

Wget – A programmatic tool to download content from the internet. The Simple Web Archiver tool primarily uses wget on the backend to grab online materials.

Adaptability

This tool should work well out of the gate, but there is always the possibility that certain websites, due to their specific architectures, may not be completely archived. The tool’s code was written to be open-ended and adapt to many different types of sites, but for users with specific wants or use cases, it provides a blueprint for the creation of a variation on the tool, or even a completely new piece of software. It is also designed to run relatively quickly, and to grab the main content of a site without unnecessarily consuming CPU power.

The code is simple, and all in one file. The two main functions in the tool download either HTML/CSS/other file types or WARCs, depending on user preference.

The code is also released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. This is a strong copyleft license conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Using this license allows for a wide range of remix and reuse by users and programmers.

Conclusion

I would encourage anyone interested in web archiving to give the tool a try, and to contribute in any way they’d like: by remixing the tool’s code, forking the GitHub repository, or by simply using the tool and providing any feedback they’d like to share. 

Open Access WEek, 2020: The difference it Makes

Knowledge unfortunately isn’t free.

Much of the research being conducted at universities, colleges, and institutes around the world is written up by professors, graduate students, and research associates and published in toll-access (subscription) journals. Anyone lacking a subscription to that journal will not be able to access the articles published there. This creates a serious access problem for many people across the globe.

An alternative method of publishing, called Open Access, allows for anyone to read the results of research for free.

So, why should you care?

The short version:

  • expensive journals = less access to research results, especially for those outside of wealthy higher-ed institutions
  • less access = less research being done and/or research not happening quickly because of access barriers

The long version

Open Access at UT

UT Libraries cares deeply about the issue of access for all. For many years we’ve invested in open access publishing and infrastructure in an effort to help shift the scholarly publishing system to a more equitable form. 

In celebration of Open Access Week 2020, we’d like to highlight some of the projects we’ve invested in and/or supported over the years. This support can take the form of financial contributions, technical support, content creation, and ongoing promotion and management. We encourage you to check out these open access projects and experience the wide range of disciplines and content types that they represent.

Open Access publishing

Ars Inveniendi Analytica

  • This is a newly-launched open access, peer-reviewed journal in mathematical analysis. One of the founding editors is a UT faculty member and UT Libraries financially supports this journal so that it is free for both readers and for authors.

CLACSO

  • Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO) is a Latin American open access monograph publishing effort that UT helped organize and financially supports.

South Asia Open Archives

  • SAOA is a collection of open access materials for research and teaching about South Asia. The initial emphasis was on colonial-era materials, but current selection criteria include: value to research, utility for a broad population of users, uniqueness, at risk, and complementary to other resources.
  • This effort is supported by the Center for Research Libraries and over 25 member libraries, including UT.

Open Educational Resources

Latin American, U.S. Latinx, and African Diaspora Teaching & Learning Resources

  • This project is a rich resource for lesson plans for K-12 and college level courses, and the primary source materials that support those lessons.
  • The project has three main partners at UT: College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas Libraries, and the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.
  • This content is provided free of charge and with licenses that allow for reuse.

Information Literacy Toolkit

  • “The Information Literacy Toolkit is a collection of resources that faculty and instructors can use to help plan or implement assignments in classes. These resources can help you scaffold research skills into your classes, think of new ways to assign research, and help you assess your students’ work.“
  • The toolkit was created and is maintained by the Teaching & Learning Services unit within UT Libraries (UTL), although others at UTL are free to contribute.
  • Content is licensed with a Creative Commons License Attribution Non-Commercial license.

Digital Projects Using Special Collections

  • This resource is a starting point for educators wishing to design instructional sessions that incorporate campus collections into final digital projects. Here you will find learning outcomes, things to consider before you begin planning, sample syllabi and assignments, assessment tools, recommended readings, and guidelines for copyright and fair use
  • This project was created by staff from UT Libraries, LLILAS Benson, and the Harry Ransom Center.
  • Content is licensed with a Creative Commons License Attribution Non-Commercial license.

Open Access Infrastructure

Collections Portal

  • The Collections Portal provides free, online access to a sub-set of the UT Libraries vast collections. The platform uses open source technology like Fedora, Blacklight, and IIIF.
  • Copyright status of items varies.

GeoData Portal

  • The Portal provides access to some of the geospatial data from the UT Libraries collections. It’s also been configured to allow users to search raster and vector datasets from other universities that utilize the GeoBlacklight infrastructure.
  • All items contributed by UT Libraries are free to reuse.

Latin American Digital Initiatives Repository (LADI)

  • LADI is a digital repository that provides access to thousands of items from the 1500s to the present. The repository has an emphasis on providing access to collections that document human rights issues and underrepresented communities.
  • Copyright status of items varies.

Texas ScholarWorks (TSW)

  • This repository provides open, online access to the products of the University’s research and scholarship. It is hosted by the Texas Digital Library, a consortium of higher ed institutions in Texas that builds capacity for preserving, managing, and providing access to digital collections.
  • Copyright status of items varies.

Texas Data Repository (TDR)

  • TDR is a platform for publishing and archiving datasets created by faculty, staff, and students at UT. It is hosted by the Texas Digital Library.
  • Copyright status of items varies, but most are licensed for reuse.

When we started documenting all the things we support, we found the list was longer than is feasible for a single post, so please see our Open Access blog and Twitter account for more examples of open access projects being supported by UT Libraries.

Because we believe that access to information is a fundamental right, UT Libraries will continue to prioritize support for open access publishing, open educational resources, and open data.

We welcome any questions you may have about the OA projects listed above or OA projects you’d like to see us support.

Read, Hot & Digitized: Translatio

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this new series, librarians from UTLs Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship.  Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.

Digitization Project “Translatio” website header, featuring an image of al-Fukāha magazine.

“Translatio” at the University of Bonn—a project of the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Languages—seeks to make Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish periodicals published between 1860 and 1945 available online for free. The periodicals are selected from a number of partner institutions and digitized at the University of Bonn. The digital surrogates are then made available in a readable and downloadable version through the University’s digital collections website. “Translatio” strives, in its first phase, to focus on digitizing complete or mostly complete runs of periodicals (although it is evident that some of the titles are not nearly complete; UT Austin has acquired and is processing a complete set of al-Ḥurriyya, although there is only one volume extant in the “Translatio” database). The next phase will likely turn to less complete and single issues of periodicals that still bear cultural, historical, and research significance. The current collaborators include Bamberg University Library, Oriental Seminar of the University of Freiburg, Mainz University Library, Bavarian State Library Munich, Tübingen University Library, and the University of Bonn. Although “Translatio” is not a digital scholarship project in the conventional sense, it is still a novel gathering of digitized Middle Eastern periodicals that offers tantalizing opportunities for researchers engaged with traditional and digital methods.

A view of the short description (in German) and bibliography for the journal Ṣaḥīfat Dār al-ʿUlūm.

Access to the digitized periodicals is quite user-friendly: they are organized by language group, and then alphabetically by title. Each title expands into a brief description of the periodical (in German), a short bibliography when available, and a link to the digital images. Transliteration follows the German standard, and metadata fields are indicated in German. Some understanding of German, therefore, is helpful for navigating the site and the contents of the periodicals (Google Translate, alone or via the Chrome browser, works well in this case). The metadata for each periodical is given at the title level, and users can click through individual issues to see issue-level metadata. The metadata does not include information on editors and authors, which would be desirable for researchers, but would also take an incredible amount of labor on the side of the project workers. This could be an area for future development.

Landing page for access to the digitized issues of Ṣaḥīfat Dār al-ʿUlūm, including metadata for the journal, a list of PDF files, and a thumbnail of the opening page of the publication.

As for the digital images of the periodicals: they can be downloaded in PDF or JPEG format and saved directly to the user’s device. The images are of adequate quality for researchers who wish to use them much like they would a microform newspaper, by scanning, browsing, and reading. However, the quality of many of the titles is not high enough to capture physical details of the ink or paper, and would not lend itself to optical character recognition (OCR). That is perhaps both the primary frustration and the arena of greatest possibility with this project: all of these digitized periodicals are begging to be put through OCR so that they may be full-text searchable and instrumentalized as a corpus for distant reading. That would certainly be a groundbreaking development for the field of Middle Eastern Studies.

A screenshot of the international digital projects and collections that “Translatio” links on their website.

It is, nevertheless, significant that researchers have access to all of these excellent and important Middle Eastern periodicals in one place. Additionally—and this librarian’s favorite aspect of the project—the project website includes a clearinghouse of digital Middle Eastern periodicals collections from institutions around the world. Thus, Bonn’s digitized periodicals do not live in complete isolation from similar efforts on the web; rather, one can use the “Translatio” website as a starting place for research across a number of related collections. Researchers using UT Libraries’ print collections have the opportunity to interact with some of these titles in person as well, including al-Balāgh al-ʿUsbūʿī, al-Bayān, and Sharq, among others. The next step in the evolution of the relationships among these collections would be a federated search across all of them simultaneously—and this librarian would love to see a digital reading interface that observes the right-to-left directionality of all three languages in this project—but let’s take this one step at a time. The “Translatio” team at Bonn has much to celebrate.

WHIT’S PICKS: TAKE 8 – GEMS FROM THE HMRC

Resident poet and rock and roll star Harold Whit Williams is in the midst of a project to catalog the KUT Collection, obtained a few years ago and inhabiting a sizable portion of the Historical Music Recordings Collection (HMRC).

Being that he has a refined sense of both words and music, Whit seems like a good candidate for exploring and discovering some overlooked gems in the trove, and so in this occasional series, he’ll be presenting some of his noteworthy finds.

Earlier installments: Take 1Take 2Take 3Take 4Take 5Take 6, Take 7

Deidre Rodman / Sun is Us

Available at Fine Arts Library On Site Storage

University of North Texas jazz alum and pianist/composer Rodman takes the high road (compositionally and performance-wise) on this impressive debut album. The songs suggest a bittersweet maturity beyond her years, all the while digging on a film noir/back-alley ambiance courtesy of NYC instrumentalists. One detects masterful moments of Mingus or McCoy, but turns out it’s Ahmad Jamal and Herbie Hancock to whom Rodman mostly nods. A moody, mysterious, thematically cohesive collection.

Mark Insley/ Tucson

Available at Fine Arts Library On Site Storage

Bare-boned and gritty country rock from the longtime SoCal troubadour Mark Insley. Think of that Bakersfield sound gone cowpunk. Insley co-produces – this, his second album – along with Paul du Gre (Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow, Dave Alvin), and the result is pure Americana gold. Bad bruising kickers give way to end-of-the-bar sad ballads, while those introspective and hard-luck lyrics weave everything together into a Southwestern storyteller’s sarape. A late-night soundtrack for the road-weary heart.  

Wide Hive Players / Wide Hive Players

Availabe at Fine Arts Library On Site Storage

This Bay Area soul/jazz collective brings some serious souped-up grooveon their self-titled debut album. Wide Hive Records label founder and organist Gregory Howe leads the winding way along with songwriting accomplice Matt Montgomery on piano and bass. Apart from one track featuring the incredible jazz diva Faye Carol on vocals, the album is stripped-down, instrumental, and righteously funky. Head-nodding, hip-shaking, mood-enhancing aural medicine. The base elements of R&B – good for what ails you.

Bingo Trappers / Juanita Ave.

Available at Fine Arts Library On Site Storage

Lo-fi masterminds Waldemar Noë and Wim Elzinga wear an affinity for raw Sixties-era music like a badge upon their faded denim sleeves. With equal parts Velvet Underground, The Byrds, and (gone electric) Dylan, this Amsterdam retro-rock duo revels in lazy breezy jingle-jangle pop songs. Add in analog-recorded warmth to their sunshiny living room vibe, and the album just melds together like some dear old summer friend’s mixtape. Truly, truly groovy.

Sam Moore / Plenty Good Lovin’

Available at Fine Arts Library On Site Storage

Released over thirty years after its capture at NYC’s Atlantic Studios, this Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave fame) solo debut album celebrates the singer’s supremely soulful voice with a mixed gift bag of mostly covers. Showcasing classic production by tenor sax legend King Curtis, big-boned R&B backbeats by Bernard Purdie, and even Aretha Franklin sitting in on keyboards(!), Moore dazzles and thrills on each track. The finest of Fine Art, the highest of a higher calling, and truly essential American music.

[Harold Whit Williams is a Content Management Specialist in Music & Multimedia Resources. He writes poetry, is guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Cotton Mather, and releases lo-fi guitar-heavy indie pop as DAILY WORKER.]