2023 WAS Annual Section Meeting Recap

The Web Archiving Section hosted a joint meeting with the Preservation and International Archival Affairs sections on June 20th, 2023. 

The meeting featured speakers from Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO). When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine's online cultural heritage was at risk. Three library professionals from around the world joined together to create SUCHO, and have been working to create a digital backup of Ukrainian cultural heritage websites from museums, libraries, and public archives and their digital offerings, such as 3D collections and online activities for children.

SUCHO Coordinator Anna Kijas (Tufts University) and a panel of volunteers discussed how SUCHO was created and gave an overview of the project, including their goals for the future and what we as fellow Archivists can do to support their work.

Short section business meeting was also part of this event. Business news included: 

Summary of Activities:

Coffee Chat no. 1: “Research Use of Web Archives”
Speaker: Dr. Ian Milligan,  professor of history and Associate Vice-President, Research Oversight and Analysis at the University of Waterloo (150 registrants)

Coffee Chat no. 2: “The Rise of Collaboration Spaces at Work and the Challenges for Archivists”
Speaker: Julien Masanès, CEO of Hanzo Archives (121 registrants)

Outreach Statistics:

• 7 blog posts from November 2022-May 2023
• 3 international guest bloggers
• 782 blog views from August 2022-June 2023
• 30 tweets between November 2022-May 2023 with over 6,500 views
• 75 likes
• 50 retweets

2023-2024 Steering Committee Election:

Candidates for all sections now open, vote by July 17.

SAA Annual Meeting Informal Virtual Conversation Lounge: July 27 from 5:30pm-6:30pm to discuss the real-life trauma impacts of collecting web archives.