Company Performance Metrics
There are millions of UK websites. They are constantly changing and even disappearing. Often they contain information that is only available online. Responding to the challenge of a potential "digital black hole" the UK Web Archive is there to safeguard as many of these websites as practical. Its purpose is to give permanent online access
to key UK websites for future generations.
The UK Web Archive contains websites that publish research, that reflect the diversity of lives, interests and activities throughout the UK, and demonstrate web innovation. This includes "grey literature" sites: those that carry briefings, reports, policy statements, and other ephemeral but significant forms of information.
Because websites are revisited and snapshots ("instances") taken at regular intervals, readers can see how a website evolves over time. The archive is free to view, accessed directly from the Web itself and, since archiving began in 2004, has collected thousands of websites.
Since April 2013 the British Library has begun to archive the whole of the UK web domain, under the terms of the Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations 2013. This is in partnership with the other five legal deposit libraries for the UK: the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the library of Trinity College Dublin. Access to the whole legal deposit web archive will be possible only on premises controlled by one of the six legal deposit libraries. However, the UK Web Archive team will seek additional permissions from the owners of a small selected group of sites for offsite access through this site.
