[game_preservation] Preserving Websites

[Andrew Armstrong]

Yep, that's mainly what I'd intend if the project got going for game 
websites going down - either archive-it one time crawls, website backups 
from the source, or something, stored in a location publicly accessible.

Doing it constantly on sites still up and running would be what the 
Wayback machine partially does, and also not be feasible or really 
desirable, although doing a good scrape every year of a site can work 
wonders (a lot of changes can happen in a year for larger sites), it'd 
also not be the point of the project initially (if at all, like I said - 
cost, in time and money, would be much higher).

Andrew

Henry Lowood wrote:

> Andrew,

>

> for now, just let me know.  We have an archive-it instance with our 

> project, and I can use it to crawl sites. If a site is going down, I 

> can do a one-time crawl to catch it near the end at least.  By the 

> way, frequent crawls for the most part are not adding much content to 

> what we get from infrequent or even one-time crawls.

>

> Henry

>

> Andrew Armstrong wrote:

>> We need to look at some point into helping preserve websites - 

>> especially ones that simply cease to be. I brought this up off list a 

>> bit with Henry and Simon a while back - what pipqued my interest 

>> again was this:

>>

>> http://www.gamecyte.com/rip-gamecyte-2008-2009

>>

>> A site I don't think I've ever visited, and if not then I can't 

>> recall it from memory. It was operating for an entire year, and I'd 

>> no clue. Well, it's stopping - but no doubt this is something to 

>> preserve in some way if they then switch off the hosting next month.

>>

>> The IA crawlers are okay in general, for sites which don't go out of 

>> business or offline, and if they are setup properly. However many 

>> sites are not crawled often enough, certainly not to the level of 

>> accuracy that would be acceptable for preservation (see the example 

>> HotU!)

>>

>> Jason Scott created a task force more dedicated to grabbing sites 

>> while they are still online, 

>> http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page - I will join 

>> their group to see how they operate, and see if I can help or do 

>> something.

>>

>> This is a possible project we can look at working on continually - 

>> while the IGDA is both a developer orientated group (give or take) 

>> and hasn't got the funding to do a physical archive, I can help put 

>> my efforts into this (along with any help we're able to get) just 

>> because I don't think many other places (any other places?) think 

>> about this and other area's we're working on.

>>

>> My thoughts are to maybe just for now list websites which are 

>> basically shutting with their "death date" and then requesting off 

>> the owners/webmasters if possible an archived copy of the site for at 

>> least dark storage on the Internet Archive, if not public access. 

>> I've no idea if the more accurate/on demand Wayback scanner is 

>> another route to take, although doens't that require payment to use? 

>> (while we have no money ;) )

>>

>> Thanks in advance to anyone provides a comment, I'd not mind knowing 

>> if this was worth working on in the future.

>>

>> Andrew

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>

> -- 

> Henry Lowood, Ph.D.

> Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;

>  Film & Media Collections

> HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall

> Stanford University Libraries

> Stanford CA 94305-6004

> 650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood 

> <http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood>

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