Arquivo.pt participated in the 15th librarians and archivists national meeting of the APBAD, held at Universidade Portucalense – Infante D. Henrique, from June 17 to 19. The event featured a panel dedicated to digital preservation, during which several services were presented that the community can use to preserve its websites.
Under the theme “Commitment to Democracy: Dialogue, Well-Being, Inclusion,” the APBAD meeting —one of the most important gatherings of information professionals—drew more than 500 participants.
Arquivo.pt’s involvement relates to an important aspect of its mission, which is “to promote the collection and preservation of content available on the national Internet” (Decreto-Lei n.º 132/2025).
Panel: “Digital Preservation in a Municipal Context—Challenges and Potential Solutions”
Digital preservation is an increasingly important issue for public agencies. Municipalities, for example, are required to implement a digital preservation plan (Portaria n.º 112/2023, art.4º). On the other hand, digital content is scattered across many formats, systems, and even different organizations and jurisdictions.
The panelists were José Borbinha (INESC-ID, IST, Universidade de Lisboa), Pedro Penteado (DGLAB, Direção de Serviços de Arquivística e Normalização), Helena Neves (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Direção Municipal de Cultura, Departamento de Património de Cultural, Divisão de Arquivo Municipal) and Ricardo Basílio (Arquivo.pt-FCCN-FCT).
Sharing knowledge, best practices, and resources is a way to accelerate the preservation of collective memory.
Website and Social Media Preservation: 5 Good Examples for 1 Solution
In this panel presentation at the APBAD meeting organized by Arquivo.pt, examples of best practices for preserving Web content were provided. They were as follows:
- Perform a high-quality website harvest (once a year)
- Curate websites for preservation purposes
- Create website records in the catalog with a link to the history
- Identify and collect external web content related to the organization’s mission
- Use Arquivo.pt services in partnership
These examples were made possible by community archivists, in collaboration with Arquivo.pt, including the Arquivo Municipal de Almada, Biblioteca e Arquivo da Madeira, Arquivo Municipal de Sines.
Memory of Municipalities on the Internet
The online exhibition “Memória dos Municípios na Internet” (Memory of Municipalities on the Internet) was an initiative launched by Arquivo.pt in 2019 to highlight the value of the digital content published over time on the websites of Portugal’s 308 municipalities.
We invite all the professionals here to tour the exhibition and see how well their municipality’s website is maintained.
Data Collection Criteria for the Portuguese Web (Poster 1)
The Web is a publishing space without limits. Every day, all kinds of content are published, such as institutional information, business and industry services, content created by individuals, news from accredited media outlets, content of dubious veracity, fake news, and entertainment content. Is it possible to collect this content in a Web archive? What are the limitations?
In this poster, we outline the collection criteria used by Arquivo.pt:
- .PT domain websites
- Portuguese websites across all domains
- National interest (Portuguese-speaking countries, European Union)
- Topics of interest to the community
- Public content, with no technical or legal restrictions, and no login or paywall required
We would like to highlight the criterion “topics of interest to the community,” which we use to conduct special collections, such as when we are collaborating with researchers. This was the case with a collection on artists and art galleries, in collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Art Library (2021), and the collection on Feminism in Portugal, in collaboration with researchers from the FEMGlocal Project (2026).
ArchivePageNow – Web Content Self-Archiving Service for Organizations and Citizens (Poster 2)
Public content can be archived using the ArchivePageNow service, which the archive provides to promote the preservation of web pages among researchers and is also useful for the general public.
A poster dedicated to ArchivePageNow served to visually illustrate the usefulness of this service.
Materials Presented at the 15th APBAD meeting
- Slides “Website and social media preservation: 5 good examples for 1 solution” (PDF)
- Exhibition “Memória dos Municípios na Internet” (Memory of Municipalities on the Internet)
- Poster “Data collection criteria for the Portuguese Web” (PDF)
- Poster “ArchivePageNow” (PDF)
For photos of the event, visit the BAD channel on Flickr
Image gallery
15º Congresso da BAD, Universidade Portucalense
