Exploring the "French Web" of the 1990s

This chapter draws from the experience of the collective French Web90 project to show the approaches, tools, and methodologies required to sketch a broad historical picture of the French Web during the 1990s. It also describes the limits and challenges we met during its realisation.
Uncertainties about the perimeter of the French Web and its archives, data overload, progressive learning of a particular digital literacy, specific features of born-digital heritage (Newsgroups and Web archives), and using the tools for its exploration and analysis are at the heart of this study, which has progressively refined and adapted its ambitions and methodologies, notably by using methods and tools from the Digital Humanities.