Presenter: Sara Day Thomson, Digital Archivist, Centre for Research Collections

What happens to information on the web when webpages are updated or taken offline? This session presents the overarching concepts of web archives - what they are and why they matter. It looks at approaches and tools used to collect and preserve web content (such as websites and social media) and how archived web content can be accessed and used in research. In addition to this overview, the session will provide a short demonstration of an easy and free to use web archiving tool. It will also describe a handful of useful tools for analysing archived web content for different types of research approaches. From capture to access, this session introduces web archives and points to resources for learning more and getting started on capturing and using them.