Bernard F. Reilly
President
Center for Research Libraries
In the past decade the Web has emerged as a vital medium of political communication, serving political activists, parties, popular fronts, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a global message board through which to communicate with constituents and the world community.
The Political Communications Web Archiving investigation (PCWA), funded by the Mellon Foundation, analyzed the behaviors of those who use political Web content as primary sources for research, and the effectiveness of the existing Web archiving efforts to meet those users’ needs. The investigation also specified a service model and the curatorial methodologies that are most likely to support sustainable preservation of the fugitive contents of the Political Web. Participating in the PCWA project were NYU, Cornell, UT Austin, Stanford, and the Internet Archive.
Political Communications Web Archiving Investigation Executive Summary (Word document)