This article is now published, in Web 25. Histories from 25 Years of the World Wide Web, edited by Niels Brügger. It is published by Peter Lang, in hardback, paperback and ebook formats. A postprint version is available to download here.

From the Introduction:

If 2015 marked the elapse of 25 years since the birth of the web, 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of web archiving: of systematic attempts to preserve web content and make it accessible to scholars and the public. As such, the time is ripe to make an initial assessment of the history of the movement, and the patterns into which it has already fallen. This chapter represents the first attempt to document the subject at length. It concentrates on what might be termed the cultural history of the movement. It does not address the question of how web archiving has been carried out, but why, by whom, and on whose behalf.

Historians have for long known that, in order to interpret archival materials properly, it is first necessary to understand how that archive came into being. Why is a particular object to be found, and not another? What does the archive seek to document, and whose interests does it serve? The last very few years has seen a very welcome growth in interest in the archived web among scholars. However, that interest is not yet accompanied by the necessary familiarity with how the archived web came into being, and to be thus familiar is arguably even more important in this context than for traditional paper-based archives. Older distinctions with which historians are familiar — between published document, ‘grey literature’ and institutional records — have become blurred, as have those between personal and institutional publication. As a result, it has become less clear where the responsibility for preserving which types of content lies among the established institutions in the library and archives field. In addition, the archived web resource is unlike the live version from which it was derived in subtle and complex ways that do not apply to print publications or to manuscripts. If this chapter serves to orient users as to some of the questions they should be asking of their sources, and of the institutions that provide them, it will have achieved its aim.

It falls into the following sections: The Internet Archive / National libraries / The corporate record / Research-driven archiving / Activist archiving / Users and the future