Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Human Rights Web Archive @ Columbia University

Abstract

Web archiving encompasses several challenges that we face in the midst of the radical changes that are the focus of the ACRL-NY 2013 Symposium. Like many other interdisciplinary, wide-ranging and highly networked fields, human rights scholarship relies extensively on web-based information, but much of this content is at risk of disappearing within a relatively short time. To meet the needs of the scholarly community, the Human Rights Web Archive @ Columbia University (HRWA) was created. The HRWA (http://hrwa.cul.columbia.edu/) is a searchable collection of archived copies of human rights websites created by non-governmental organizations, national human rights institutions, tribunals and individuals. In this poster we will detail our early progress in the assessment of the effectiveness of the HRWA through user testing and a review of scholarly publishing in journals focusing on human rights research. We will also discuss how keeping users actively engaged is at the core of our evolving collecting policy for web archives. In sharing our experiences with a collection development policy centered in an active and agile feedback loop, we hope to shed light on strengths and opportunities for growth including via collaborative initiatives