Web Archiving Projects End-user Perspective


Bogdan Trifunović




This paper examines usability and accessibility of the publicly opened Web archiving projects. It aims to identify user-friendly features associated with the web sites of several web archiving projects, but also the creation of basic structure and framework for the comparative analysis in the process of evaluating them. For the purpose of this research, five Web projects have been selected: PANDORA (National Library of Australia), EUROPEAN ARCHIVE, MINERVA (Library of Congress), UK WAC and WEBARCHIV (National Library of the Czech Republic). Projects were “inspected” from the perspective of the regular user, concentrated on ease of navigating the web sites, accessibility (e. g. position of search filed, search options, browsable categories, organization of the content, help section), documentation and general layout (analysis of implemented interface design and it’s looks, where following modern trends in web design is not regarded as crucial advantage over old school in design and layout). The stress is on user-oriented experience of using these web sites and their background architecture. The ultimate goal is to raise awareness in Serbia and the Balkans about Web Archiving and digital preservation of the Internet resources and online cultural heritage.