NIWRC Website Selected for Inclusion in the Library of Congress
The United States Library of Congress has selected the NIWRC website for inclusion in the Library's historic collection of Internet materials related to the Women’s and Gender Studies Web Archive. “It is a great honor to be included in this important collection and this historical record,” said Lucy Simpson, Executive Director, NIWRC. “Internet materials on issues addressing violence against Native women is limited and on specific aspects not available.”
The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library’s traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including websites. The Library’s web archives are important because they contribute to the historical record, capturing information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the web as a powerful medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were “born digital” and never printed on paper.
“It is amazing the speed and quantity of information passing through NIWRC’s website, social media and communication’s systems,” said Princella RedCorn, Communication’s Officer, NIWRC. “The content is historical in nature as NIWRC continues the national reform efforts and organizing required to increase safety for Native women. It’s great to know this information and work will be preserved for future generations.”
The Library of Congress will start archiving in June and use the URL niwrc.org/ and other portions of NIWRC’s website, including public content that NIWRC’s page links to third party sites such as Facebook, YouTube, etc. The Library of Congress will engage in the collection of material from NIWRC’s website at regular intervals and may include it in future collections beyond the Women’s and Gender Studies Web Archive. The Library will make this collection available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement. The Library may also make the collection available more broadly by hosting the collection on the Library's public access website.
“We are excited the Library of Congress will preserve NIWRC's Internet materials,” said Tang Cheam, Director of Information and Technology, NIWRC. “The Indigenous peoples, the general public, and researchers from across the world will now have access to NIWRC’s important body of written, audio, and video materials.”
Contents of the web archive will be available on the Library of Congress website in July of 2020. Check here for more information; https://www.loc.gov/programs/web-archiving/about-this-program/ and https://www.loc.gov/websites/
