A Summary of Our Participation at the IIPC Conference WAC, April 9–10, 2025 in Oslo
On April 9–10, the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) hosted a conference at the National Library in Oslo. Just over 200 participants from Singapore, the USA, Taiwan, Egypt, Qatar, Japan, and many European countries gathered for a few days to explore issues surrounding the digital preservation of information from online sources such as websites and social media.
Many of the attendees work at national libraries around the world, focusing on capturing their respective countries’ digital footprints on the web.
Our Presentation
Arkiwera’s CEO, Magdalena, attended the event to listen, learn, and be inspired—but also to give a “lightning talk” about our work on preserving social media posts. This topic raises many questions related to legal and technical aspects. Capturing information from social media through crawling or harvesting interfaces is not only prohibited by the platforms’ terms of service but is also increasingly difficult due to the technical barriers implemented by tech companies.
Day 1
The well-organized conference began with a keynote on language models for training AI. To build effective AI tools, they must be trained on data—so where can that data be sourced from? This was the topic of the opening talk by Javier de la Rosa, Head of Language Models at the National Library of Norway.
The day continued with parallel sessions covering a variety of topics. We joined the track focused on digital channels such as podcasts and, of course, social media. One thing became clear during this session: we are all facing similar challenges. Some have been solved—or at least managed—by a few, while others remain to be tackled.
As is often the case at conferences, the presentations and sessions were valuable, but so were the informal conversations during breaks. It’s a privilege to exchange experiences with colleagues from around the world who are working on similar issues. These conversations continued in the workshops held as part of the conference. Magdalena participated in a workshop on how archived websites can be published and made accessible as data. What considerations should be made in doing so? The workshop was based on a checklist developed by a working group, which served as a helpful guide. Magdalena will carry the insights from this workshop into our ongoing efforts to develop a public interface for data preserved with Arkiwera.
The first day ended with a “Poster Slam Session.” In the networking area of the conference, many posters showcased research projects and various initiatives in the field. Each poster was presented on stage in a 1-minute pitch—a fast-paced and entertaining concept that was new to many of us in the audience and even to some of the presenters.
Day 2
The second day of the conference offered insights into the work of Arquivo.pt in Portugal, including how they collect, publish, and manage website archives. We also explored the digital preservation of newspapers and e-journals, and how archived websites and online newspaper articles can be used by researchers to better understand our current times.
After two packed days of presentations and discussions, Magdalena returned home filled with new inspiration and knowledge. Together with the Arkiwera team, she will help put what we’ve learned into practice, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue with the colleagues and organizations we met at the conference.
