Dissemination – sobre.arquivo.pt

Artificial Intelligence processes data from Arquivo.pt

March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 by Ricardo Basílio

Artificial Intelligence (AI), covers various areas of knowledge, such as linguistics and computing, and is present in the new technologies used by citizens on a daily basis.

For example, when we search for information on the Internet and the computer generates an amazingly accurate response, in a language very close to our own.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is what allows machines to perfect the algorithm that generates these answers tailored to Internet users.

The problem is that natural language processing models have been developed more for the English language and less for Portuguese and other languages with less representation.

The more the processing models are trained on a language, the better they will be able to interpret the complexities of the language. But this is only possible if quality data is available.

Portuguese text collection on Arquivo.pt available for research

Arquivo.pt appears here as the largest Portuguese-language textual dataset in Portugal, available in open access, for researchers to train NLP models.

In recent years, researchers from various research groups and projects have drawn attention to the usefulness of preserved web data for large-scale processing.

Arquivo.pt has more than 1 Petabyte of preserved web content dating back to the 1990s, including everything that can be found on web pages. It’s not just text, but also images, audio files, video, page code and various metadata.

The content is accessible via the search interface and the Arquivo.pt APIs.

In order to make it easier to download archived resources from the web, Arquivo.pt has created indexes for researchers in CDXJ format.

GlórIA, a model for the Portuguese language

One of the projects that used Arquivo.pt to obtain large amounts of text is called GlórIA and is a large-scale language model (LLM) focused on the European Portuguese language.

“Despite the abundance of LLMs for many high-resource languages, the availability of such models remains limited for European Portuguese” as the authors of GlórIA project, Ricardo Lopes, João Magalhães, David Semedo, researchers at the NOVA School of Science and Technology, explain in their article GlórIA – A Generative and Open Large Language Model for Portuguese.

The model used 35 million tokens, or expressions that machines can process, from various sources.

Arquivo.pt contributed a collection of 1.4M European Portuguese archived news and periodicals.

You can try generating text in European Portuguese using the GlórIA API inference on the Hugging Face Model card.

If you want to develop a project or study using Arquivo.pt, you can start your research and, if you need help, contact us.

Know more

Arquivo.pt in the top 3 of government services in Portugal

January 15, 2024January 15, 2024 by Ricardo Basílio

Arquivo.pt, Portugal’s national web preservation service, has earned a prominent position by being named one of the top 3 government services in the 2023 Portugal Digital Awards. This recognition is testimony to the crucial role played by Arquivo.pt in the preservation and accessibility of Portugal’s digital heritage.

The three finalists in the category Best Government Project (best digital transformation project in the public administration sector) were Arquivo.pt, the Porto Digital Association and Banco de Portugal, which received the winning award.

Mission and recognition

Arquivo.pt, developed by the FCCN – National Scientific Computing , stands out as an innovative initiative in the field of digital preservation. Its mission is to collect and archive web content, allowing users to access past versions of web pages, documents and other online resources.

The recognition at the Portugal Digital Awards highlights not only the importance of digital preservation, but also the effectiveness and relevance of Arquivo.pt as a government service. By providing a journey through time via the Internet, this resource becomes a valuable tool for researchers, academics and the general public.

Commitment to digital preservation

Participation in the award underlines Arquivo.pt’s commitment to improving the historical record of the evolution of the Web in Portugal. This service not only contributes to the country’s digital memory, but also facilitates research, promoting understanding of digital evolution over time.

In addition, Arquivo.pt’s distinction reflects FCCN’s ongoing effort to develop and improve innovative services that benefit society. Digital preservation is a crucial component in ensuring that Portugal’s digital heritage is passed on to future generations, and Arquivo.pt fulfills this role in a unique way.

In conclusion, recognition in the Portugal Digital Awards 2023, a competition that received over 300 candidate services, solidifies Arquivo.pt’s position as one of the leading government services at the forefront of digital preservation. This achievement highlights the growing importance of digital preservation in the digital age in which we live.

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Arquivo.pt reaches 1 PetaByte of preserved information!

November 23, 2023November 22, 2023 by Ricardo Basílio

The collection of 1 PetaByte of content predominantly in Portuguese, accessible to both researchers and ordinary citizens, is a milestone that deserves to be celebrated, in the month of its 16th anniversary.

At Arquivo.pt you can search for information published on the Web in the past, such as:

Discover more pages through the selected pages in the Arquivo.pt Online Exhibitions.

Purpose and mission of the Portuguese Web Archive

Arquivo.pt was created on November 8, 2007 with the aim of preserving content from the Portuguese Web.

In 2013, as a service operated by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), its mission was formulated as follows: “To promote the preservation of content available on the national Internet, ensuring that it is made available to the scientific community and the general public” (Decreto-Lei no. 55/2013).

In recent years, Arquivo.pt has created new services, such as CitationSaver, which allows researchers to record references to web content in their scientific articles, Memorial and Complete page, which facilitate access to content scattered throughout the huge 1 PetaByte block of data.

Where did so much information come from?

In order to reach the 1 PetaByte volume, Arquivo.pt periodically recorded content from websites in the .PT domain and from Portuguese websites in other domains.

In addition, frequent daily and monthly collections were made from a small number of government sites and the main news sites in Portugal.

As part of international collaborations, content was collected from sites in various languages, for example on the 2019 European Elections.

Content prior to 2008 came from the Internet Archive and donations, such as a collection made by the National Library and INESC on the 2005 Legislative Elections.

The largest Portuguese-language dataset available to researchers

By making 1 PetaByte of information available, in open access and through the use of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), Arquivo.pt is a useful tool for research.

For example, a researcher who wants to do a study on elections in Portugal can use the entire Arquivo.pt collection. Better still, they can focus on just a few special collections dedicated to the elections, choosing the ones that interest them and downloading just a few Terabytes to process automatically with the APIs.

Contributions from the various teams and friends of Arquivo.pt

The development of Arquivo.pt is more than a technological issue and has been due to the dedication and persistence of the various teams that have worked on it since 2007.

It was also due to the contribution of many friends of Arquivo.pt, who were always on hand to help improve, and to the response of the user community.

Congratulations to all! Thank you.

Meet the winners of the Arquivo.pt Award 2023!

September 4, 2023June 26, 2023 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on September 4th, 2023 at 02:40 pm

The winners of the Arquivo.pt Award 2023 were announced by the Público newspaper, the official communication partner of this edition, on 26 June.

40 applications were received.

The award ceremony tooke place during the closing session of the Encontro Ciência (Portuguese Science Summit), on July 7, at Aveiro University.

1st place – “Viajar no tempo sobre carris”

The winner of the 10 000 euro prize was the work “Viajar no tempo sobre carris” (Travelling through time on rails) developed by Antero Pires, Carlos Cipriano, Diogo Ferreira Nunes and Ruben Martins.

“Viajar no tempo sobre carris” is an online platform that analyses and presents the evolution of train travel times in Portugal, based on timetables preserved in Arquivo.pt.

For example, it allows you to see the duration of the journey Lisbon-Oporto on the Alfa Pendular since the year 2000.

2nd place – “Representatividade das mulheres artistas na imprensa nacional”

The 2nd prize of 3 000 euros was awarded to the work “Representatividade das mulheres artistas na imprensa nacional” (Representativeness of women artists in the national press), by Cláudia Sevivas and Miguel Boavida.

This work resulted in the website Existo that provides information on Portuguese artists, referring to the web pages in which they were mentioned over time. The work is based on an analysis of their representation and visibility that allows several readings.

For example, we can find information about the artist Joana Vasconcelos, news about other artists in a certain year or even get a graphic visualization of women artists compared to men.

3rd place – “Memória Política”

The 3rd prize of 2 000 euros was awarded to the work “Memória Política”, (Political Memory) developed by Miguel Lopes, Maria Carneiro and João Andrade.

“Memória Política” is a Web application that processes and presents information taken from the web pages of political parties represented in the Portuguese Parliament, archived by Arquivo.pt.

For example, it allows you to search for the term “democracy” and obtain pages from the websites of the Parties related to the search. The results can be grouped by Party and by year.

Honorable Mention granted by Público newspaper

The Público newspaper, official partner of the 6th edition of the Arquivo.pt Prize, awarded an Honourable Mention to the work “Fábrica do Jornal” (Newspaper factory), carried out by Miguel Almeida.

“Fábrica do Jornal” is a Web application that allows the user to generate a personalized newspaper from the news preserved at Arquivo.pt. The user can obtain a version that can be printed or saved in digital format.

Honorable Mention granted by Público newspaper AMCC – Aveiro Media Competence Center

The Aveiro Media Competence Center (AMCC), awarded its Honourable Mention to the work “Imaginarium”, carried out by Diogo Sousa.

“Imaginarium” is a web application that searches for images based on similarities with other images.

For example, after suggesting an image of a car, “Imaginarium” searches for images in Arquivo.pt that have some affinity with the suggested image.

Flash interview – AMCC Executive Director

Award cerimony

The awards ceremony took place at the closing session of the Science 2023 Meeting, at the University of Aveiro, on 7 July 2023.

The awards were presented by the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Elvira Fortunato, the President of the FCT Board of Directors, Madalena Alves and the Executive Director of the Aveiro Media Competence Centre, João Moraes Palmeiro.

Image gallery

Cerimónia de Entrega Prémio Arquivo.pt 2023

Flash enterviews

Video of the cerimony

Ciência 2023 – Plenary Session 6 (closing session)

Dissemination materials

Press

Os horários de comboio mostram que as viagens não estão mais rápidas, pelo contrário. Público newspaper, June 26, 2023.

Short link to this page: arquivo.pt/winners2023

Arquivo.pt presentations at IIPC GA/WAC, RESAW 2023 and CLEOPATRA

March 10, 2024June 16, 2023 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on March 10th, 2024 at 05:23 pm

Meeting the Web Archive Community

The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC), a consortium that brings together Web preservation initiatives from around the world, held its General Assembly with its members on May 10, 2023.

On the following days, May 11 and 12, the IIPC Web Archiving Conference (IIPC WAC) was held, an initiative open to the community, where people or entities not associated with the IIPC and interested in the Web preservation domain can participate.

The two events were jointly hosted by KB – National Library of the Netherlands, and by Beeld & Geluid – Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision.

Contributions from the Arquivo.pt at the Web Archiving Conference

Arquivo.pt participated in the IIPC working group meetings (Training Working Group and Curators Working Group) and contributed with presentations in the thematic sessions Collaborations & Outreach and Program infrastructure (sessions 7 and 17).

Arquivo.pt updates 2023 (slides)
Linking web archiving with arts and humanities: the collaboration between ROSSIO and Arquivo.pt (video, slides)
Arquivo.pt behind the curtains (slides)

Meeting the RESAW research community

RESAW (Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials) is an initiative created in 2012 with the aim of promoting studies based on archived Web content, in areas such as Social Sciences, Digital Arts and Humanities.

The RESAW 2023 conference was held at the MUCEM Lab (Mediterranean Institute of Heritage Crafts) in Marseille on June 5-6, 2023, under the theme Exploring the Archived Web During a Highly Transformative Age.

Contributions from Arquivo.pt to RESAW 2023

Arquivo.pt contributed with presentations to the sessions Web Archive in Mediterranean area and its merge (4.A), From online Tools to Web Archive (6.B.), Towards a participatory approach to collections (9. A.), Digging up the materials for writing web history (9.B.).

How to research governmental web data? (abstract, slides)
Archiving Cryptocurrencies (abstract, slides)
Time to explore, time to learn from the archived web: Arquivo.pt training initiative (abstract, slides)
Exhibiting Web Memories from Arquivo.pt: a call for community participation (abstract, slides)

CLEOPATRA Project Meeting

The CLEOPATRA Project, led by the L3S Research Center at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hannover, has developed since 2019 a training programme for doctoral researchers (Early Stage Researcher, PhD).

Arquivo.pt has participated in three courses: Incentives design for hybrid multilingual information processing and analytics, in Southampton; National and transnational media coverage of European parliamentary elections, 2004-2014, London; and NLP for under-resourced languages, in Zagreb, Croatia.

In 2022, the Arquivo.pt welcomed two researchers in its facilities who used the archived resources and received special support from the Arquivo.pt team to develop their research.

The CLEOPATRA Project ended in 2023 with a meeting on the 16th May, in Hannover, which brought together Professors, Researchers and representatives of the institutions involved.

Daniel Gomes, Arquivo.pt’s Manager, highlighted the new tools that Arquivo.pt makes available and the results of the work carried out by the researchers that have passed through Arquivo.pt.

Secondments@Arquivo.pt and new research tools available (slides)
Research open datasets on 2019 European Parliamentary Elections

Arquivo.pt at Jornadas de Computação Científica 2023. Register now!

October 24, 2023May 8, 2023 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on October 24th, 2023 at 04:03 pm

Jornadas de Computação Científica 2023 was held at the Naval School in Almada from 27 to 29 June 2023.

This event is a meeting for sharing knowledge among the entities that make up the national higher education and research community.

The event counts with the participation of decision-makers of the institutions, people in charge of computer technical services and people responsible for libraries and documentation services, among others.

Arquivo.pt presented two 90-minute sessions, on June 28th from 2h30 p.m. to 6 p.m., under the theme “Arquivo.pt services for managing citations and cybersecurity” and the service Arquivo.pt Memorial in the Zapping session.

Agenda

June 28 2:30-16 p.m.: Arquivo.pt: available services and system architecture

Arquivo.pt in the life cycle of a website, Daniel Gomes, Arquivo.pt Manager
The architecture of a Big Data system: Arquivo.pt, Francisco Esteveira, DevOps
Sponsor

Sessão 2 4:30-6 p.m.: Arquivo.pt: uma ferramenta para gerir citações e cibersegurança

Arquivo.pt as part of the open science system, Pedro Gomes, Arquivo.pt Collection Manager
Arquivo.pt as a cybersecurity tool, Daniel Gomes
Sponsor

Arquivo.pt Memorial

Preserve your old websites with the Arquivo.pt Memorial

Register

Jornadas de Computação Científica Registration page Científica 2023

Free training on digital media – webinars

June 2, 2023March 24, 2023 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on June 2nd, 2023 at 05:35 am

The Aveiro Media Competence Center (AMCC) is a platform to support and promote the European Union (EU) Local News Media sector in the implementation of digital transition projects. The consortium includes the PCI Creative Science Park of Aveiro Region, the Associação Portuguesa de Imprensa and the University of Aveiro.

Arquivo.pt is a free public service that allows searching and accessing Web pages preserved since the 1990’s, such as viewing an old news or accessing an old version of a website.

The collaboration between the AMCC and Arquivo.pt is materialized in a training program entitled Arquivo.pt: Digital Skills for the Media, developed in four webinars, and in the attribution of the AMCC Honorable Mention to work done on Portuguese centenary newspapers in the Arquivo.pt Award 2023.

Webinar cycle: Arquivo.pt: digital skills for media

The webinar cycle aims to equip trainees with digital skills that enable them to solve problems caused by the disappearance of digital information and gain competitive advantage in the production of unique and exclusive content.

Webinar 1: A tool for quickly searching the past
- Data: Mars 24, 2023 Time: 14h00-15h30 (in Portuguese)
  - Slides
  - Vídeo
Webinar 2: Publishing well for preserving well
- Data: April 6, 2023, Time: 14h00-15h30 (in Portuguese)
  - Slides
  - Video
Webinar 3: Automated access and processing of preserved Web information through APIs
- Data: May 4, 2023, Time: 14h00-15h30 (in Portuguese)
- Slides
- Video
Webinar 4: Web archiving: do-it-yourself!
- Data: June 1, 2023, Time: 14h00-15h30 (in Portuguese)
  - Slides
  - Video

Participation of Arquivo.pt in the meetings of the International Internet Preservation Consortium

August 1, 2023July 13, 2022 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on August 1st, 2023 at 05:37 pm

IIPC Web Archiving Conference

The following week, between May 24 and 25, held the IIPC Web Archiving Conference (IIPC WAC), online as in the previous year due to the contingencies of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 2022 edition of these two events was hosted by the Library of Congress.

Arquivo.pt resources and initiatives presented at the IIPC WAC 2022

The IIPC Web Archiving Conference is an initiative open to the community, where people or entities interested in the Web preservation domain may participate.

The Arquivo.pt contributed to the Ligthtning Talks sessions (session 5 and session 13).

The Arquivo.pt presentations focused on the resources and initiatives that this service has lately developed for the community.

Exhibiting Web memories from Arquivo.pt with free tools (abstract, slides, video)
Arquivo.pt as open data provider (abstract, slides, video)
The Past Web: A Book to Support Web Archiving (abstract, slides, video)
Arquivo404 (abstract, slides, video)
SavePageNow (abstract, slides, video)
Archiving Cryptocurrencies (abstract, slides, video)
Arquivo.pt training initiative (abstract, slides, video)

Cryptocurrencies and web curation on the 15th anniversary in Viseu

January 10, 2023June 7, 2022 by Ricardo Basílio

Last updated on January 10th, 2023 at 04:27 pm

Session of Arquivo.pt at the Jornadas 2022

Arquivo.pt was at the annual meeting Jornadas de Computação Científica 2022, held from May 31st to June 2nd, at the Instituto Politécnico de Viseu.

Cryptocurrencies and web curation were the starting point for sharing the news of the service and talking about the work developed since the last edition of the Jornadas.

Zapping session remembered the 15 years of Arquivo.pt

Arquivo.pt was created in 2007 with the goal of collecting the Portuguese Web. After fifteen years it continues its mission, collecting, but mainly facilitating the access to preserved contents, both for the researcher and the common citizen.

In the Zapping session at the conference, in which each FCCN service presented its services, the Arquivo.pt was highlighted for its long-standing activity in Web preservation.

Training with the Library of the Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão

The Arquivo.pt team was in the Library of the School of Technology and Management (ESTGV) in an extra session of the conference dedicated to digital preservation, mainly to institutional content published on the Web.

The training was promoted by the Library team, especially Dr. Rosa Silva, Coordinator of the service, and had the participation of the community. Besides the presentations, there was an opportunity to share ideas and point out future collaborations.

Paulo Medeiros, responsible for the service of Culture, Communication and Documentation, presented the institutional channels of the Instituto Politécnico de Viseu. These channels are increasingly present on the Web, such as the magazine Polistécnica that went digital in 2012, the scientific journal Millenium and the video channel Politécnico TV.

Arquivo.pt showed how any person or institution can have their Web contents preserved in an adequate format. To save contents directly on Arquivo.pt you can use the new SavePageNow recording service. To make a local Web archive you can use ArchiveWeb.page – Webrecorder.net.

Arquivo.pt APIs presented to Internet technologies students

The Arquivo team was in the classroom, thanks to the excellent welcome given by Prof. Dr. Valter Alves, director of the Design and Multimedia Technology course. Vasco Rato, Web developer of the Arquivo.pt, presented the APIs of the Arquivo.pt (Applications Programming Interfaces) for the automatic processing of preserved information.

By using the APIs of Arquivo.pt the students can make assignments for the technology subjects and compete to the Arquivo.pt Award.

Arquivo.pt APIs (slides)

Image gallery

Daniel Gomes na sessão do Arquivo.pt nas Jornadas FCCN 2022 em Viseu

Sessão do Arquivo.pt nas Jornadas FCCN 2022 em Viseu

Pedro Gomes na sessão do Arquivo.pt nas Jornadas FCCN 2022 em Viseu

Ricardo Basílio na sessão do Arquivo.pt nas Jornadas FCCN 2022 em Viseu

Sessão de formação na Biblioteca da ESTGV

Aula no curso de Tecnologia Design e Multimédia da ESTGV

Web pages for the history of the Instituto Politécnico de Viseu

In 2018, the library team developed a project with the participation of young students that resulted in a documentary short film where memories of old web pages, preserved by Arquivo.pt, were included.

Create automatic narratives about any topic!

October 25, 2021October 25, 2021 by Ricardo Basílio

Arquivo.pt provides a new function that allows you to automatically create temporal narratives on any topic.

The “Narrative” functionality, integrated into Arquivo.pt in September 2021, is the result of the collaboration between “Conta-me Histórias”, winner of the Arquivo.pt Award 2018, and Arquivo.pt.

The “Conta-me Histórias” (Tell me Stories) project was developed by researchers from the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD – INESCTEC ) and affiliated to the institutions Instituto Politécnico de Tomar – Center for Research in Smart Cities (CI2) ; University of Porto and University of Innsbruck .

How it works?

When a user enters a set of words about a topic in the Arquivo.pt search box and clicks on the “Narrative” button, the user is directed to the “Conta-me Histórias” service, which automatically analyzes the news from 25 websites archived by Arquivo.pt over time and presents a chronology of news related to the topic.

For example, if we search for “Just Bieber” and click on the “Narrative” button (Figure 1), we will be directed to the “Conta-me Histórias” , where we will automatically obtain a narrative of archived news (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Search results for pages about “Justin Bieber”.

Figure 2: Narrative of news about “Justin Bieber” from Portuguese news sites preserved by Arquivo.pt generated by the “Conta-me Histórias” service.

Create your narrative now!

“Conta-me Histórias” researches, analyzes and aggregates thousands of results to generate each narrative about a topic. It is recommended to choose descriptive words about well-defined themes, personalities or events to obtain good narratives.

Creating a narrative is useful for researchers, journalists or citizens who want to quickly get an overview of the evolution of a topic along time, thus saving them a lot of time and effort.

Go to Arquivo.pt and try to create a narrative about a theme of your choice.

Tell us about your experience so we can improve the service!