WHEREAS the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online initiative was established in March 2022 by founders Quinn Dombrowski, Sebastian Majstorovic, and Anna Kijas, drawing together a global team of over 1,000 volunteer archivists, librarians, digital humanists, IT professionals, and others in partnership with Internet Archive, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and the University of Alberta to rapidly archive Ukrainian cultural heritage on the internet during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and
WHEREAS this group self-assembled into a nimble yet skilled and robust team of experts in using web crawlers, curating metadata, conducting quality control, and leading outreach efforts; and
WHEREAS since the launch of this initiative, more than 5,000 websites and 50TB of data have been archived from Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions with the goal of digital repatriation after the war; and
WHEREAS this group established partnerships with the NFDI4Culture, National Library of Sweden, Society of Archives and Records Management in Sweden, and many more organizations to fund and supply digitization equipment directly to Ukrainian institutions; and
WHEREAS their work is exemplar of rapid disaster response archival action during the invasion of a sovereign country by an aggressor;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online be honored with a 2022 SAA Council Resolution for their decisive and dedicated effort in saving the online cultural heritage of Ukraine.
Presented August 27, 2022.