Overview / Background
The Political Communications Web Archiving Project (PCWA) was a research and planning initiative coordinated by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to explore strategies for preserving web-based political communications for long-term research and educational use.
The project examined how websites produced by political organizations, activists, and other non-governmental groups could be selected, captured, preserved, and made available as historical resources.
Current Status
The Political Communications Web Archiving Project is no longer an active, standalone CRL initiative. Its research documented early approaches to preserving political web content and addressed challenges related to selection, technology, intellectual property, governance, and long-term sustainability.
History: Founding and Context
- As the web became an increasingly important medium for political communication, political organizations began using it to publish manifestoes, statements, constitutions, declarations, treaties, and other materials.
- Recognizing the research value and potentially temporary nature of this content, CRL coordinated the PCWA project to investigate how political web materials could be systematically collected and preserved.
- The project used political web communications from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Western Europe as test collections while developing approaches that could be applied more broadly.
History: Key Points
- PCWA explored strategies for capturing and preserving web-based political communications.
- The project considered technical, curatorial, legal, organizational, and financial challenges associated with web archiving.
- Researchers examined how materials should be selected, when and how websites should be harvested, and which characteristics of web content should be preserved.
- The project identified intellectual property and long-term sustainability as important considerations.
- Investigators proposed a consortium model governed primarily by the research community to support sustainable political web archiving.
- The resulting service model was designed to adapt as digital and network technologies evolved.
Ongoing Relevance to CRL’s Mission
Although the project is no longer active, PCWA addressed issues that remain important to CRL’s preservation mission: identifying at-risk research materials, developing sustainable approaches to stewardship, and supporting long-term access to resources that might otherwise disappear.
The project also built on CRL’s experience with collaborative collection-building initiatives such as the Area Microform Projects (AMPs), International Coalition on Newspapers (ICON), and Digital South Asia Library.
Funders or Sponsorship and Partners
The Political Communications Web Archiving Project was coordinated by CRL and funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The project included four university partners responsible for different geographic areas:
- Cornell University: Southeast Asia
- New York University: Western Europe
- Stanford University: Sub-Saharan Africa
- University of Texas at Austin: Latin America
The Internet Archive and Library of Congress also participated in the investigation.
Launch and Scope
PCWA was designed as a research and planning initiative rather than an ongoing web archive. It used political communications from selected regions and organizations as test materials for developing methods that could be applied to political web content more broadly.
The investigation was organized into three teams:
- Long-Term Resource Management
- Curatorial
- Technical
Membership or Participation
Participation centered on CRL and its project partners rather than a formal membership structure. The project brought together universities, preservation organizations, and national library expertise to investigate approaches to political web archiving.
The proposed long-term model envisioned broader participation from the academic and non-academic research communities through a consortium responsible for coordinating stewardship, governance, and sustainability.
Key Activities
- Investigating methods for capturing and preserving political websites
- Developing criteria for selecting web content for preservation
- Exploring appropriate timing and methods for web harvesting
- Identifying characteristics of websites that should be preserved
- Examining intellectual property considerations
- Evaluating technical requirements for long-term web preservation
- Developing organizational and governance models for sustainable archiving
- Exploring potential partnerships and funding models
- Defining responsibilities for long-term stewardship of archived political web resources
Page updated 9/22/2026