Archiving the Black Web 2021
"The expansive growth of the web and social media and the wide use of these platforms by Black people presents significant opportunities for archivists and other memory workers interested in documenting the contemporary Black experience. But while web archiving practice and tools have grown over the past twenty-five years, it is a cost prohibitive archiving activity and presents access and resource challenges that prevent large sectors of the archives profession and especially Black collecting organizations from fully engaging in the practice. At the same time, web-archiving practice has developed mostly within an exclusive network of professionals working in well-resourced primarily white academic institutions and national libraries in the United States and Europe. The Archiving the Black Web national forum is an urgent call to action to address these issues with the goal of establishing a more equitable and accessible web archiving practice that can more effectively document the Black experience online. Additionally, as you will learn from the brilliant speakers during this event, Black people have always been early adopters of technology and the internet is no exception. Black people have been involved in the technical and cultural development of the web from the beginning and have always leveraged the digital space to advance personal and community agendas. Uncovering this history of the diverse and complex ways Black people have contributed and continue to use the web, and putting that history in conversation with current attempts to document Black digital culture, is an important step in developing an inclusive web archiving practice." (from the website)