Written by Web Collections Librarian Miranda Siler
The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation is pleased to announce the launch of the South Asian Governmental Publications Web Archive. This archive aims to collect and preserve open access online formats of government serials from South Asia. From demographic data to legislative proceedings, the serials that form the focus of the archive include publications on all subjects and from all countries of the region (i.e. Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). The archive complements robust print collections of government documents acquired through the PL-480 and subsequent South Asia Cooperative Acquisitions Program (SACAP). Many of those titles have migrated to electronic formats, but the unstable nature of online content (due to administrative, political, and technological or platform-based instability) leaves users with less control over and confidence in information than more traditional, print repositories.
The South Asian Governmental Publications Web Archive preserves primary source material and safeguards its integrity of the historical record, protecting it from correction, redaction, or removal. This project is led by librarians at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the Library of Congress, and the University of Texas Austin, under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation. Titles included in the archive were identified by the Library of Congress Field Offices in New Delhi and Islamabad and selected by participants in the South Asia Cooperative Collection Development Workshops (SACOOP). Funding for description was granted by the South Asia Materials Project (SAMP) and metadata was created by the Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL).
Web archives preserve vulnerable information that may disappear from the live web and capture the ways in which selected websites have evolved over time. The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation’s Web Collecting Program is a collaborative collection development effort to build curated, thematic collections of freely available, but at-risk, web content in order to support research. Learn more about the program or explore the collections here.
