Legal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regu-lations, have introduced comprehensive national domain web crawling, an essential part of the national library re-mit to collect, preserve and make accessible a nation’s intellectual and cultural heritage (Brazier, 2016). Scholars have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal de-posit collections: in the case of web archives, the poten-tial for research extends to contemporary materials, and to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal deposit regulations support computational approaches to research using national web archive data (Brügger, 2012; Hockx-Yu, 2014; Black, 2016). This paper examines the impact of electronic legal deposit (ELD) in the United Kingdom, particularly how the 2013 regulations influence innovative scholarship using the Legal Deposit UK Web Archive. As the first major case study to analyse the implementation of ELD, it will ad-dress the following key research questions:•	•	Is legal deposit, a concept defined and refined for print materials, the most suitable vehicle for suppor-ting DH research using web archives?

•	How does the current framing of ELD affect digital in-novation in the UK library sector?

•	How does the current information ecology, including not for-profit archives, influence the relationship between DH researchers and legal deposit libraries

Berube, Linda

Gooding, Paul

Terras, Melissa

English

Legal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regu-lations, have introduced comprehensive national domain web crawling, an essential part of the national library re-mit to collect, preserve and make accessible a nation’s intellectual and cultural heritage (Brazier, 2016). Scholars have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal de-posit collections: in the case of web archives, the poten-tial for research extends to contemporary materials, and to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal deposit regulations support computational approaches to research using national web archive data (Brügger, 2012; Hockx-Yu, 2014; Black, 2016). This paper examines the impact of electronic legal deposit (ELD) in the United Kingdom, particularly how the 2013 regulations influence innovative scholarship using the Legal Deposit UK Web Archive. As the first major case study to analyse the implementation of ELD, it will ad-dress the following key research questions:• • Is legal deposit, a concept defined and refined for print materials, the most suitable vehicle for suppor-ting DH research using web archives?• How does the current framing of ELD affect digital in-novation in the UK library sector?• How does the current information ecology, including not for-profit archives, influence the relationship between DH researchers and legal deposit libraries

Edinburgh Research Explorer

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital HumanitiesCitation for published version:Gooding, P, Terras, M & Berube, L 2018, 'Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: AUniverse of Lost Opportunity?' Digital Humanities 2018 annual conference, Mexico City, Mexico, 26/06/18 -29/06/18, pp. 590.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 01. Aug. 2018Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: A Universe of Lost Opportunity?Dr. Paul Gooding (University of East Anglia); Prof. Melissa Terras (University of Edinburgh); Linda Berube (University of East Anglia).www.elegaldeposit.org @elegaldepositWhat is the Digital Library Futures Project?Digital Library Futures is a two-year research project to investigate the impact of e-legal deposit collections on two key stakeholders in the United Kingdom: academic depositlibraries, and existing and potential users of e-legal deposit collections. Legal Deposit is the legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to atrusted repository, and ensures the preservation of a nation’s published output. Since the UK’s introduction of electronic legal deposit regulations in 2013, digital publications arenow systematically collected for posterity. We are exploring what it means for the UK’s national libraries, and for Digital Humanities Researchers.Overall UsageNational library collections received under legal deposit in the UK are traditionallyreference-only. In other words, readers are usually not able to access legal depositworks outside the reading rooms of the six UK legal deposit libraries. Unlike printedworks, electronic resources can be accessed remotely; indeed, user expectationshave shifted towards ubiquitous remote access. Despite this, the UK regulations stilltreat legal deposit electronic materials in the same way as print: in the case of theUK Legal Deposit Web Archive, discovery and retrieval is only available within thereading rooms of the six UK legal deposit libraries.The graph to the left shows overall usage of the UKLDWA, which receives anaverage of 226 users per month, accessing a combined 1859 pages per month. Thischimes with the impressions of the staff we spoke to, one of whom commented that“very few people are sitting down and… doing a piece of academic research with it.”Given the posterity-driven objectives of legal deposit, though, what looks likesuccess in terms of usage?Digital Library Futures is sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant no. AH/P00584501000200030004000500060007000Aug-14Sep-14Oct-14Nov-14Dec-14Jan-15Feb-15Mar-15Apr-15May-15Jun-15Jul-15Aug-15Sep-15Oct-15Nov-15Dec-15Jan-16Feb-16Mar-16Apr-16May-16Jun-16Jul-16Aug-16Sep-16Oct-16Nov-16Dec-16Jan-17Feb-17Mar-17Unique Users and Page views on the UK Legal Deposit Web Archive (British Library, 2017)Users Page ViewsText and Data MiningWinters argues that “it is the portability of data, its separability from an easy-to-usebut necessarily limiting interface, which underpins much of the exciting work in theDigital Humanities” (2017, p.246). Restrictions in using derivative data from theUKLDWA mean that researchers must often look to not-for-profit organisations likeCommon Crawl (http://commoncrawl.org/) and the Internet Archive(https://archive.org) for portable data. These organisations can explore theboundaries of copyright legislation to support their mission.This contrast between deposit libraries, described by our interviewees as riskaverse due to regulations and publisher relationships, and risk-enabledindependent organisations, challenges library/DH collaboration models. Whatdoes this changing information ecology mean for libraries and researchers in thefuture?Research Context: The UK Legal Deposit Web Archive (UKLDWA)The British Library began harvesting the UK web domain under legal deposit in 2013,a step towards preserving the UK’s “digital universe” (National Library of Scotland,2013). Although the boundaries of this universe are unclear, its scale as an archivalcollection is huge: the first web crawl in 2013 produced 30.84 terabytes of data; by2017, the total collection had grown to 500Tb (British Library, 2017). A web archive ofthis scale promises significant opportunities for DH scholarship. However, thispotential is affected by the UK Legal Deposit regulations, which are founded on thecenturies-old model applied to print resources within the walls of legal depositlibraries. This means that materials that were freely available via the web becomeinaccessible outside library reading rooms as soon as they are deposited. This raisesthe following vital research questions:- How does the current framing of e-legal deposit in the UK affect usage, both interms of user numbers and digital innovation?- Is legal deposit, a concept defined and refined for print materials, the most suitablevehicle for collecting web archives that allow reuse by DH researchers? https://flic.kr/p/e91SrjNext StepsThe current framing of legal deposit in the United Kingdom has a clear impact on reuse of web archival materials. Limitations on access ensure that very few people use the UKLegal Deposit Web Archive, while barriers for text and data mining challenge existing models for library/DH collaboration. What is less clear is how these patterns of use areconsistent with the strategic aims of legal deposit: in other words, do we need to reconsider the conceptual frameworks for legal deposit in light of the differing affordances of theborn-digital universe? The next steps in answering the questions raised here are to:- Provide empirical case studies of the impact of e-legal deposit collections on our project partners, the Bodleian Libraries and Cambridge University Libraries, and their users;- Develop analysis of e-legal deposit usage metrics in the United Kingdom, combined with user surveys and interviews with library staff, practitioners, and key stakeholders.https://flic.kr/p/8R2fWd

Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities:A Universe of Lost Opportunity?

Enlighten

      Gooding, P., Terras, M. and Berube, L. (2018) Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: a Universe of Lost Opportunity? Digital Humanities 2018, Mexico City, Mexico, 26-29 Jun 2018. pp. 590-592.     There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.    http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/168229/              Deposited on: 5 September 2018                       Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk u 590  uLegal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: A Universe of Lost Opportunity?Paul Gooding p.gooding@uea.ac.ukUniversity of East Anglia, United KingdomMelissa Terras m.terras@ed.ac.ukUniversity of Edinburgh, United KingdomLinda Berube l.berube@uea.ac.ukUniversity of East Anglia, United KingdomIntroductionLegal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regu-lations, have introduced comprehensive national domain web crawling, an essential part of the national library re-mit to collect, preserve and make accessible a nation’s intellectual and cultural heritage (Brazier, 2016). Scholars have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal de-posit collections: in the case of web archives, the poten-tial for research extends to contemporary materials, and to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal deposit regulations support computational approaches to research using national web archive data (Brügger, 2012; Hockx-Yu, 2014; Black, 2016).This paper examines the impact of electronic legal deposit (ELD) in the United Kingdom, particularly how the 2013 regulations influence innovative scholarship using the Legal Deposit UK Web Archive. As the first major case u 591  ustudy to analyse the implementation of ELD, it will ad-dress the following key research questions:• Is legal deposit, a concept defined and refined forprint materials, the most suitable vehicle for suppor-ting DH research using web archives?• How does the current framing of ELD affect digital in-novation in the UK library sector?• How does the current information ecology, includingnot for-profit archives, influence the relationshipbetween DH researchers and legal deposit libraries?Research ContextThe British Library began harvesting the UK web domain under legal deposit in 2013. The UK Web Archive had, by 2017, grown to 500Tb. However, UK legal deposit regu-lations, based on a centuries-old model of reading room access to deposited materials, affect the archive’s signi-ficant potential for research: in practice, researchers can only access the full range of UK websites within the walls of selected institutions. DH scholars, though, require ac-cess to textual corpora and metadata in addition to inter-faces for discovery and reading (Gooding, 2012). Winters argues that “it is the portability of data, its separability from an easy-to-use but necessarily limiting interface, which underpins much of the exciting work in the Digital Humanities” (2017: 246). Restricted deposit library ac-cess requires researchers to look elsewhere for portable web data: by undertaking their own web crawls, or by utili-sing datasets from Common Crawl (http://commoncrawl.org/) and the Internet Archive (https://archive.org). Both organisations provide vital services to researchers, and both innovate in areas that would traditionally fall under the deposit libraries’ purview. They support their mission by exploring the boundaries of copyright, including ex-ceptions for non-commercial text and data mining (In-tellectual Property Office, 2014). This contrast between risk-enabled independent organisations and deposit libraries, described by interviewees as risk averse, cha-llenges library/DH collaboration models such as BL Labs (http://labs.bl.uk) and Library of Congress Labs (https://labs.loc.gov). MethodologyThis paper analyses the impact of the UK regulatory en-vironment upon DH reuse of the Legal Deposit UK Web Archive. It presents a quantitative analysis of information seeking behaviour, supported by insights from 30 inter-views with UK legal deposit library practitioners. Quanti-tative datasets consisted of Google Analytics reports, and web logs of UK web archive usage, which were analysed in SPSS and Excel. These datasets allowed us to identify broad patterns of information-seeking behaviour.Practitioner interviews were hand-coded to three le-vels in Nvivo: initial coding, to provide the foundations for higher level analysis; focused coding, to further refine the data; and axial coding, using the convergence of ideas as a basis for exploring the research questions (Hahn, 2008). This analysis will inform two further research phases: a broader quantitative analysis of UK ELD collections; and qualitative analysis of the ways that the research com-munity, and DH researchers, use ELD collections.ConclusionThis paper provides a vital case study of how legal deposit regulations can influence library/DH collabora-tion. It argues that UK ELD regulations use a print-era view of national collections to interpret digital preserva-tion and access. A lack of media specificity, combined with a more cautious approach to text and data mining than allowed under UK copyright, restricts DH research: first, by limiting opportunities for innovative computatio-nal research; and second by excluding lab-based library/DH collaborative models. As web preservation activities become concentrated in a small group of key organisa-tions, current regulations disadvantage libraries in com-parison to not-for-profits, whose vital work is supported by an ability to take risks denied to legal deposit libraries. The UK’s approach to national domain web archiving re-presents a lost opportunity for computational scholar-ship, requiring us to rethink legal deposit in light of the differing affordances of born-digital archives.ReferencesBlack, M. L. (2016). The World Wide Web as Complex Data Set: Expanding the Digital Humanities into the Twentieth Century and Beyond through Internet Research. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, 10(1): 95–109.Brazier, C. (2016). Great Libraries? Good Libraries? Dig-ital Collection Development and What it Means for Our Great Research Collections. In Baker, D. and Ev-ans, W. (eds), Digital Information Strategies: From Applications and Content to Libraries and People. Waltham, MA: Chandos Publishing, pp. 41–56.Brügger, N. (2012). Web History and the Web as a His-torical Source. Studies in Contemporary Histo-ry, 2 http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/site/40209295/default.aspx (accessed 9 January 2017).Gooding, P. (2012). Mass Digitization and the Garbage Dump: The Conflicting Needs of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods. Literary and Linguistic Com-puting doi:10.1093/llc/fqs054. http://llc.oxford-journals.org/content/early/2012/12/22/llc.fqs054.abstract (accessed 30 July 2013).Hahn, C. (2008). Doing Qualitative Research Using Your Computer: A Practical Guide. London: Sage Publica-tions Ltd.Hockx-Yu, H. (2014). Access and Scholarly Use of Web Archives. Alexandria, 25(1/2): 113–27.u 592  uIntellectual Property Office (2014). Exceptions to Copy-right: Research UK Government https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attach-ment_data/file/375954/Research.pdf.Winters, J. (2017). Coda: Web Archives for Humanities Research - Some Reflections. The Web as History. London: UCL Press, pp. 238–48.

Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: a Universe of Lost Opportunity?

Legal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regulations, have introduced comprehensive national domain web crawling, an essential part of the national library remit to collect, preserve, and make accessible a nation's intellectual and cultural heritage. Scholars have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal deposit collections; in the case of web archives, the potential for research extends to contemporary materials, and to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal deposit regulations support computational approaches to research using national web archive data.

This poster introduces the Digital Library Futures project, which examines the impact of electronic legal deposit in the United Kingdom. The full poster abstract can be found at the following link on the DH2018 website. </p

Gooding, Paul (5467895)

Terras, Melissa (5217533)

Berube, Linda (5467898)

The Francis Crick Institute

Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: A Universe of Lost Opportunity

Enlighten: Publications

  
 
 
 
 
Gooding, P., Terras, M. and Berube, L. (2018) Legal Deposit Web Archives and the 
Digital Humanities: a Universe of Lost Opportunity? Digital Humanities 2018, Mexico 
City, Mexico, 26-29 Jun 2018. pp. 590-592. 
 
   
There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are 
advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. 
 
 
 
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/168229/  
      
 
 
 
 
 
 
Deposited on: 5 September 2018 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow 
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk 
u 590  u
Legal Deposit Web Archives 
and the Digital Humanities: 
A Universe of Lost Opportunity?
Paul Gooding 
p.gooding@uea.ac.uk
University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
Melissa Terras 
m.terras@ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Linda Berube 
l.berube@uea.ac.uk
University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
Introduction
Legal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a 
decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regu-
lations, have introduced comprehensive national domain 
web crawling, an essential part of the national library re-
mit to collect, preserve and make accessible a nation’s 
intellectual and cultural heritage (Brazier, 2016). Scholars 
have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal de-
posit collections: in the case of web archives, the poten-
tial for research extends to contemporary materials, and 
to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. 
To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal 
deposit regulations support computational approaches 
to research using national web archive data (Brügger, 
2012; Hockx-Yu, 2014; Black, 2016).
This paper examines the impact of electronic legal 
deposit (ELD) in the United Kingdom, particularly how the 
2013 regulations influence innovative scholarship using 
the Legal Deposit UK Web Archive. As the first major case 
u 591  u
study to analyse the implementation of ELD, it will ad-
dress the following key research questions:
• Is legal deposit, a concept defined and refined for
print materials, the most suitable vehicle for suppor-
ting DH research using web archives?
• How does the current framing of ELD affect digital in-
novation in the UK library sector?
• How does the current information ecology, including
not for-profit archives, influence the relationship
between DH researchers and legal deposit libraries?
Research Context
The British Library began harvesting the UK web domain 
under legal deposit in 2013. The UK Web Archive had, by 
2017, grown to 500Tb. However, UK legal deposit regu-
lations, based on a centuries-old model of reading room 
access to deposited materials, affect the archive’s signi-
ficant potential for research: in practice, researchers can 
only access the full range of UK websites within the walls 
of selected institutions. DH scholars, though, require ac-
cess to textual corpora and metadata in addition to inter-
faces for discovery and reading (Gooding, 2012). Winters 
argues that “it is the portability of data, its separability 
from an easy-to-use but necessarily limiting interface, 
which underpins much of the exciting work in the Digital 
Humanities” (2017: 246). Restricted deposit library ac-
cess requires researchers to look elsewhere for portable 
web data: by undertaking their own web crawls, or by utili-
sing datasets from Common Crawl (http://commoncrawl.
org/) and the Internet Archive (https://archive.org). Both 
organisations provide vital services to researchers, and 
both innovate in areas that would traditionally fall under 
the deposit libraries’ purview. They support their mission 
by exploring the boundaries of copyright, including ex-
ceptions for non-commercial text and data mining (In-
tellectual Property Office, 2014). This contrast between 
risk-enabled independent organisations and deposit 
libraries, described by interviewees as risk averse, cha-
llenges library/DH collaboration models such as BL Labs 
(http://labs.bl.uk) and Library of Congress Labs (https://
labs.loc.gov). 
Methodology
This paper analyses the impact of the UK regulatory en-
vironment upon DH reuse of the Legal Deposit UK Web 
Archive. It presents a quantitative analysis of information 
seeking behaviour, supported by insights from 30 inter-
views with UK legal deposit library practitioners. Quanti-
tative datasets consisted of Google Analytics reports, and 
web logs of UK web archive usage, which were analysed 
in SPSS and Excel. These datasets allowed us to identify 
broad patterns of information-seeking behaviour.
Practitioner interviews were hand-coded to three le-
vels in Nvivo: initial coding, to provide the foundations for 
higher level analysis; focused coding, to further refine the 
data; and axial coding, using the convergence of ideas as 
a basis for exploring the research questions (Hahn, 2008). 
This analysis will inform two further research phases: a 
broader quantitative analysis of UK ELD collections; and 
qualitative analysis of the ways that the research com-
munity, and DH researchers, use ELD collections.
Conclusion
This paper provides a vital case study of how legal 
deposit regulations can influence library/DH collabora-
tion. It argues that UK ELD regulations use a print-era 
view of national collections to interpret digital preserva-
tion and access. A lack of media specificity, combined 
with a more cautious approach to text and data mining 
than allowed under UK copyright, restricts DH research: 
first, by limiting opportunities for innovative computatio-
nal research; and second by excluding lab-based library/
DH collaborative models. As web preservation activities 
become concentrated in a small group of key organisa-
tions, current regulations disadvantage libraries in com-
parison to not-for-profits, whose vital work is supported 
by an ability to take risks denied to legal deposit libraries. 
The UK’s approach to national domain web archiving re-
presents a lost opportunity for computational scholar-
ship, requiring us to rethink legal deposit in light of the 
differing affordances of born-digital archives.
References
Black, M. L. (2016). The World Wide Web as Complex 
Data Set: Expanding the Digital Humanities into 
the Twentieth Century and Beyond through Internet 
Research. International Journal of Humanities and 
Arts Computing, 10(1): 95–109.
Brazier, C. (2016). Great Libraries? Good Libraries? Dig-
ital Collection Development and What it Means for 
Our Great Research Collections. In Baker, D. and Ev-
ans, W. (eds), Digital Information Strategies: From 
Applications and Content to Libraries and People. 
Waltham, MA: Chandos Publishing, pp. 41–56.
Brügger, N. (2012). Web History and the Web as a His-
torical Source. Studies in Contemporary Histo-
ry, 2 http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/
site/40209295/default.aspx (accessed 9 January 
2017).
Gooding, P. (2012). Mass Digitization and the Garbage 
Dump: The Conflicting Needs of Quantitative and 
Qualitative Methods. Literary and Linguistic Com-
puting doi:10.1093/llc/fqs054. http://llc.oxford-
journals.org/content/early/2012/12/22/llc.fqs054.
abstract (accessed 30 July 2013).
Hahn, C. (2008). Doing Qualitative Research Using Your 
Computer: A Practical Guide. London: Sage Publica-
tions Ltd.
Hockx-Yu, H. (2014). Access and Scholarly Use of Web 
Archives. Alexandria, 25(1/2): 113–27.
u 592  u
Intellectual Property Office (2014). Exceptions to Copy-
right: Research UK Government https://www.gov.
uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attach-
ment_data/file/375954/Research.pdf.
Winters, J. (2017). Coda: Web Archives for Humanities 
Research - Some Reflections. The Web as History. 
London: UCL Press, pp. 238–48.


Legal deposit libraries have archived the web for over a decade. Several nations, supported by legal deposit regulations, have introduced comprehensive national domain web crawling, an essential part of the national library remit to collect, preserve, and make accessible a nation's intellectual and cultural heritage. Scholars have traditionally been the chief beneficiaries of legal deposit collections; in the case of web archives, the potential for research extends to contemporary materials, and to Digital Humanities text and data mining approaches. To date, however, little work has evaluated whether legal deposit regulations support computational approaches to research using national web archive data.

This poster introduces the Digital Library Futures project, which examines the impact of electronic legal deposit in the United Kingdom. The full poster abstract can be found at the following link on the DH2018 website

ZENODO

NEUROSURGERY ENTHUSIASTIC WOMEN SOCIETY

https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/65000852/DH2018Poster.pdf

Legal Deposit Web Archives and the Digital Humanities: a Universe of Lost Opportunity?

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