Roundtable: Web archives and their contemporary socio-technical contexts: new challenges and perspectives

Roundtable: Jane Winters, Anat Ben-David, Nicola Bingham, Sophie Gebeil and Valérie Schafer. Over nearly three decades of web archiving, we have witnessed profound
transformations in the landscape: the emergence of different players, practices and processes; the evolution of aims and goals; the recognition of new challenges; and the blossoming of collaborations between archival institutions and researchers. Web archive studies has begun to take shape as a discrete field of research and is itself beginning to be interrogated critically. We would argue that web archives and web archive studies are reaching an inflection point.
After a ‘long process resulting in the consolidation of standards, best practices, shared methods, tools, and knowledge’ (Ben David 2021, 182), there is an opportunity to reevaluate web archiving research and practice and to reconsider the relationship between web archives and their contemporary socio- technical contexts (Schafer
and Winters 2021). Web archives are not merely static repositories; they are dynamic entities closely entangled with contemporary challenges. These include ethical approaches to the archiving, preservation and reuse of personal and public data; the environmental impact of digital preservation in the face of a climate crisis; and the requirement to respond swiftly to unforeseen
events and crises.
All of these transformations unfold simultaneously within web archiving institutions and in the broader context of changing digital and scientific practice. They affect the objects and subjects of study; methods of data collection and preservation; and the demands and expectations placed on web archives by society. In this
roundtable, we will explore the extent to which web archives are both active participants in and influenced by this highly transformative age, and how they are responding to it. We will consider web archives as ‘archives of crisis’; discuss how web archives are (and are not) in tune with these challenging and febrile times; and explore the processes of constant renewal, adaptation an ultimately transformation that have allowed web archives to weather the digital and social storms of the early 21st century. Finally, we will identify current and future challenges that will necessitate continuing adaptation and innovation in web archiving and web archive studies, including artificial intelligence, new kinds of born-digital data, the increasing platformisation of the web, and the importance of transnational studies.