This Webinar Cycle, dedicated to the preservation of cultural memory published on the Web, is a collaboration between APDSI and Arquivo.pt, the FCCN digital services of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.
Luís Vidigal, Founding Partner of APDSI, Filipa Fixe and João Tavares, Board Members, introduced the theme of each session and the Arquivo.pt team showed how the preservation of web content works, allowing organizations and citizens to access the web of the past.
The four sessions had a total of 121 participants.
Program
Webinar 1 – March 20 – Arquivo.pt: a new tool for researching the past. Daniel Gomes, Head of Arquivo.pt – Vídeo, slides
Webinar 2 – March 25 – To publish well, to preserve well. Pedro Gomes, Arquivo.pt Collections Manager – Vídeo, slides
Webinar 3 – March 27 – Access and automatic processing of information preserved from the Web through APIs. Vasco Rato, Web developer, Vídeo, Slides
Webinar 4 – April 1 – Archiving the Web: do-it-yourself! Ricardo Basílio, Digital Curator – Video, slides
Professor José Borbinha, eArchiving workshop, 25 February 2025, at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon (José Tribolet Room)
Arquivo.pt took part in the eArchiving Portugal workshop, which was held at the Instituto Superior Técnico on 25 February 2025, at the invitation of Professor José Borbinha, one of the first people to do web archiving in Portugal when he worked at the Biblioteca Nacional in the 90’s.
Professor José Borbinha, better than anyone, knows how to tell in the first person the small, almost epic episodes, the actions of the first ‘heroes’ that led to the creation of a web archive in Portugal. He sees Arquivo.pt as an essential service when it comes to digital preservation and safeguarding organisations’ communication heritage.
The event had a hybrid format with 50 in-person and 270 online participants and was open to all public and private organisations concerned with digital preservation and information management in any type or format. This includes the content of websites and social networks!
eArchiving, a European initiative born in Portugal
The eArchiving Initiative‘s main objective is digital cultural heritage and was created at a meeting of European partners in Lisbon.
‘It was precisely in this room (the José Tribolet room at the Instituto Superior Técnico) that eArchiving began eleven years ago, on 29 May 2014,’ recalled José Borbinha (INESC-ID), host and organiser of the workshop.
Janet Anderson, manager of eArchiving, showed the progress made in eleven years in the field of digital preservation. The projects funded by the European Union within the consortium have resulted in the development of specifications, software, training and knowledge about digital preservation.
This was followed by a presentation of contributions to digital preservation in Portugal: DGLAB, by Pedro Penteado, Centro Hospitalar São João, by Fernanda Gonçalves, Ministério da Justiça, by Alexandra Lourenço and Cristina Soares, Arquivo.pt, by digital curator Ricardo Basílio.
Finnaly, Miguel Ferreira spoke on behalf of DLM Forum MTÜ , a community in which KEEP Solutions LDA participates by developing software. Taking a more technical approach, he showed how the metadata in the E-Ark packaging specifications is structured to fulfil the requirements of digital preservation.
How to use Arquivo.pt to preserve institutional websites
Digital preservation requires collaboration, both internally and externally between organisations, and this workshop served that purpose: sharing good practices, disseminating tools and services and connecting people.
Arquivo.pt highlighted three services from its catalogue for preserving content published on the web:
Arquivo.pt services can be used, for example, by municipalities to preserve content published on institutional websites.
Arquivo.pt training, such as webinars or face-to-face sessions, are useful for empowering organisations to take care of institutional content, including social media content that requires an alternative strategy.