The political communications Web archive project entails an investigation and planning effort to develop effective methodologies for the systematic, sustainable preservation of Web-based political communications. The effort is focused on Web materials produced by political groups and NGOs in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. These materials include reports, manifestos, constitutions and declarations, official statements, and other documents issued via the Web by individual political activists, political parties, and popular front and radical organizations. Such communications are vital primary source materials for history and area studies, but tend to be produced erratically and disappear quickly. This undertaking, a combined effort of the Center for Research Libraries, New York University, Cornell University, Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin will lay the groundwork for cooperative preservation of these materials.