Community Webs, a program of Archive-It and the Internet Archive, was launched in 2017. Its mission is to advance the capacity for public libraries and other cultural heritage organizations to build archives of web-published primary sources documenting local history and underrepresented voices. You can learn more about Community Webs on the website.

Web archives preserve born-digital content for future use by students, researchers, and historians. Web crawling software (crawlers) capture copies of all of the files that make up a webpage, preserving the look and feel, as well as much of the functionality of the site. Using a web archive player like the Wayback Machine, users can navigate and interact with the archived website the same way they would have used the live site.

Learn more about web archiving.

Digital content is more impermanent that paper and physical objects. Even physical digital media and digital files degrade over time. Information on the World Wide Web can be lost from the historical record for a variety of reasons—resulting in a loss of our history for future generations.

This 2024 study by the Pew Research Center shows how web content is being lost.

Web archives can preserve collections of online newspapers, local blogs, civic websites, social media, and embeded website files like images, PDFs, and videos.

Content is considered for the HCLS Web Archive based on its value and relevance to the collection. Web content selected will have either evidentiary value (documentation of the functioning of an organization or individual) or research value. The following guidelines apply to all web content to be included in the HCLS Web Archive:

1) Web content describing the people, places, events, organizations and/or objects related to Hancock County and the Gulf Coast region.

2) Websites that complement and/or fill in gaps of existing collections and resources or relationship to a wider project, program, or initiative at HCLS.

3) Web content that will not duplicate information that can be found in other web archiving collections.

4) The Web Archive should reflect and be inclusive of the entire population of Hancock County and the Gulf Coast region, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender or sexual orientation, political affiliation, and age of the creator(s).

HCLS welcomes input from the community. You can submit a seed for consideration using this web form.

It is generally accepted that the creation of Web Archives falls within the boundaries of fair use. HCLS recognizes the right to collect publicly accessible web content and make them available for research purposes.

The Library will, to the best of its ability, contact site owners to inform of impending crawls.

Creators may request the removal of crawled web content from publicly accessible areas and HCLS will work with creators who do not wish to have their web content archived to permanently delete any crawls that have already been completed.

HCLS Library Support Coordinator Ash Parker is the primary contact on the Community Webs project and the HCLS Web Archive.

All requests from the media should be directed to the PR/Marketing Coordinator Kevin Cole.