Who are they?
The International Internet Preservation Consortium, or IIPC for short, is an organization dedicated to the preservation of historically and culturally significant websites. Their members include libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions from all across the world.
What do they do?
The IIPC is a forum, a place where all members can share their knowledge and expertise. In addition, they also develop new ideas, inventing new tools of the trade. For instance, the WARC file format which came out of the IIPC is now widely used for saving downloadable snapshots of websites.
Secondly, the IIPC strives to make archiving a lot more friendly. To that end, they work to lower the high entry barrier through training programs. They hold workshops and seminars to educate archivists on the latest digitization technologies. All the while, they spread consciousness of why preserving the history of the net is so important.
How do they do it?
The IIPC is split into a number of working groups. Each of these groups manages projects and tasks related to a specific branch of archiving. The current working groups are:
- The Content Development Working Group
- The Preservation Working Group
- The Research Working Group
- The Training Working Group
In addition, members might opt to host their own projects outside of the working groups. One such past project was TwitterVane, a project for archiving Twitter activity, headed by the British Library. Furthermore, members can also apply for funding on their projects, under the IIPC’s Funding Program.
Finally, the IIPC has many events throughout the year; workshops, seminars and the like. Do note, these events are not exclusive to members, you can attend some of these on Zoom.
How do I sign up?
Well this is a bit of a loaded question, since IIPC members are not individuals. However, if you, as a member of a group which may be eligible for the IIPC would like to enroll your institution, would like to join the IIPC you can apply for membership on their website http://netpreserve.org/join-iipc/.
In case you are not an affiliate of such an institution, but would still like to get involved, you can check out their events. If you are a developer, you might be able to contribute to their GitHub repos.
So what are you waiting for? Consort with the IIPC today!
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