IIPC

In July 2003 the national libraries of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, The British Library (UK), The Library of Congress (USA) and the Internet Archive (USA) acknowledged the importance of international collaboration for preserving Internet content for future generations.

This group of 12 institutions chartered the IIPC to fund and participate in projects and working groups to accomplish the Consortium’s goals. The initial agreement was in effect for three years, during which time the membership was limited to the charter institutions. Since then, membership has expanded to include additional libraries, archives, museums and cultural heritage institutions involved in Web archiving.

The goals of the consortium are:

• To enable the collection, preservation and long-term access of a rich body of Internet content from around the world.
• To foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards for the creation of international archives.
• To be a strong international advocate for initiatives and legislation that encourage the collection, preservation and access to Internet content.
• To encourage and support libraries, archives, museums and cultural heritage institutions everywhere to address Internet content collecting and preservation.

The registry currently includes descriptions of twenty one archives from around the world. As additional archives are made available by IIPC members, the registry will be updated.

The registry provides an overview of all members web archiving efforts and outputs, offering a single point of access to users of archived web content. It also provide detailed description of each web archive, including information about the collecting institution, the harvesting methods (domain, selective, or thematic), the language of the user interface, methods for accessing the archived content, and whether there are any access restrictions that researchers need to be aware of.

September 2012: New website

January 2010: IIPC renewed agreement
A new agreement for continuing of IIPC was settled. The agreement involves a revision of the consortium goals for the next three years. According to the agreement consortium will be opened up to more members than the 39 currently involved.

To achieve its mission, the consortium has dedicated member committees working on specific topics and producing various deliverables. A Program Officer coordinates the working groups ensuring consistent methodology and enhancing collaboration.

In 2010, the chartered working groups are:

• Harvesting
• Access and
• Preservation

December 2009: Long-term preservation of web archives - Experimenting with emulation and migration methodologies