Common questions about web archives

We archive web content on a limited basis in alignment with our collection policy and the NSHE records retention schedule. Though some sites might persist for years, others could go offline for technical reasons or just because creators decide to retire the content. Web archiving allows us to package all of the content, links, and media on pages into a single file. Doing so allows future users to view the content in the future, with less risk that technological or human factors will cut off access to content of enduring value.

Websites are complex ecosystems that are based around relationships, both within pages and between them. The more dynamic and complex the site, the higher the likelihood that something might not capture properly. While we aspire to capture every site in its entirety, there is a possibility that you will encounter errors when browsing sites. 

Things to consider when troubleshooting an error

Some content or links might be out of scope.

• Each web archive includes a set of boundaries that we call its scope. 
• Some links that exist on services or sites outside of the target scope might not be included in the archive.
• For example, an artist profiled on an archived site might have a link to her social media, which is likely outside of the scope of the archive.
• In these cases, the error reflects the boundaries we need to set to keep archived files manageable and, thus, cannot be resolved.

In some cases, ReplayWeb.page might struggle to load a page, especially from complex archived sites. If the page is clearly part of the archive, consider taking these steps:

• Refresh the page and reload the file
• Close out and restart your web browser, then reload the file

Share your errors with us

We encourage you to contact us if you encounter errors. We use those reports to improve our processes and, in some cases, we may be able to help troubleshoot the problem.

Preservation and inclusion in our collections depends on alignment with our collection policy and the NSHE records retention schedule. Please contact us here with questions about adding to our collections. If you would like training on the use of web-archiving tools so you can capture content yourself, please reach out to our Digital Archive team.

We use a variety of tools to archive sites, depending on the content and size of the project. There are two core products that we currently use:

• Archive-It, a web-archiving service created by the Internet Archive
• The Browsertrix Crawler, an open-source tool developed by the Webrecorder project