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Peter Keeling

Here’s a cautionary tale about digitisation of

For the WW1 centenary, the National Library of Wales created cymru1914.org, to pull together scans of primary sources relating to the period. By all accounts it was brilliant.

Naturally, like all such projects, the site disappeared once the money ran out, taking everything with it. Rip.

··Web
51boosts·50favorites
Peter Keeling

But! That’s where the fun starts. From what I can tell, when the NLW added things to cymru1914, they neglected to add the copies to their own website at the same time.

Consequently, cymru1914’s main legacy appears to be a 1914-1918 shaped hole in the NLW’s digital collections.

See for example, the scans of the diaries of the MP J.H. Lewis: 42 out of 46 volumes are online…

archives.library.wales/index.p

archives.library.walesPocket and desk diaries, - National Library of Wales Archives and ManuscriptsThis series comprises pocket and desk diaries kept by John Herbert Lewis. Their contents vary considerably; some include detailed descriptions of c...
Peter Keeling

@jessamyn

I have since been pointed to this statement: library.wales/catalogues-searc

("Technical difficulties", sure...)

I expect nothing was lost, and that one day I will be able to snoop around Sir John's diaries from the comfort of my living room.

But this was completely foreseeable. NLW is otherwise so good at doing digital.

www.library.walesCymru 1914 - National Library of WalesA page explaining that the Cymru 1914 website is no longer available.
Jessamyn

@PMKeeling Oh gosh what a mess I bet there's a bad story behind that.

I know we like working with them at the Flickr Foundation but like a lot of the orgs we work with, they're under-resourced and often the digital stuff suffers the most when that happens.

Rita Singer

@jessamyn Allow me to leave this timely petition in your timeline. The NLW is on the brink of losing a great number of staff due to the cuts. petitions.senedd.wales/petitio

Petitions - SeneddPetition: Increase, don’t cut, funding for the National Library, Amgueddfa Cymru and the Royal CommissionWe call upon the Welsh Government to increase spending on institutions that safeguard the heritage and history of Wales – the National Library of Wales, Amgueddfa Cymru and the Royal Commission – instead of cutting funding by between 10.5 per cent and 22.3 per cent. These institutions protect the historical and cultural legacy of our nation, by collecting and preserving it, and then showcasing it to everyone who lives in Wales. They also provide the world with a window to our unique history.
Rita Singer

@PMKeeling I still mourn the demise of that archive. So much work just gone and lost.

OkazuYuri

@PMKeeling Which is also why The Wayback Machine is so critical a resource. The site is gone, but the data lives on: web.archive.org/web/2016031514

web.archive.orgCymru 1914 - Home
Peter Webster

@PMKeeling I'm 90% sure it will have been included in the UK Web Archive, in which NLW is a partner.
However, UKWA itself is still unavailable due to the ransomware attack at the BL, so....

*
Johannes

@PMKeeling
On the topic of archiving in the age of ephemeral websites I highly recommend “Laser Versus Parchment: Doomsday for the Disc” from Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales podcast. It illustrates the challenges of keeping material accessible, giving a walk through multiple (digital) formats failing to “preserve” a gargantuan 1980s Doomsday book inspired public science project by the BBC and juxtaposing them to the long life of the original Doomsday manuscripts.

timharford.com/2023/11/caution

Tim Harford · Cautionary Tales – Laser Versus Parchment: Doomsday for the DiscWilliam the Conqueror undertook a remarkably modern project. In 1086, he began compiling and storing a detailed record of his realm: where everyone lived, what
*
Moritz Negwer

@PMKeeling It's not completely lost it seems, the Internet Archive has numeous copies. See e.g. here, a snapshot of the page as of mid-2014:

web.archive.org/web/2014030519

In general, archive.org is a fantastic resource. It's a non-profit running on donations and has amassed the largest open-access snapshot collection of the open web. I wish more people knew about it.

Edit: Fixed link, apparently Mastodon does not like links ending in *. It now points to the archived startpage of cymru1914.org

ROLLER

@PMKeeling it's sad when something you like dies on the Web. Did you try web.archive.org/ ?

web.archive.orgWayback Machine
Peter Keeling

@roller

Not yet! Plan to when I have the time. Archived archives. Archives all the way down. 🗄️

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