ETH Zurich’s new Web Archive is live – and features a full-text search
The ETH Zurich Web Archive, an important source for research into the history of science, has been relaunched following a comprehensive upgrade. It now dates back to 1997. All contents have been full-text indexed and are, starting from 2017, intensively curated.
The new Web Archive is an impressive tool: at least once a year, the University Archives preserves around 800 URLs, subdomains and websites of the university’s chairs, organisational units, research groups and other contents. It currently has a data volume of 4.8 terabytes.
The Web Archive documents the ETH Zurich website as a historical source. It stores the ETH's webpages and makes them permanently available to the public.
Full-text search and integrated research tool
Last year, the Web Archive underwent a complete relaunch. Its external pagenew platform is much more than just a collection of web data: having been full-text indexed, the Web Archive now features a full-text search engine. This makes it a valuable research tool for academics and other users. Researchers can cite any of its websites using a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). PDF files attached to the websites are also included in the archive and integrated into the full-text search.
The Web Archive is integrated into the database of the University Archives, and its metadata are also contained in swisscovery. These links make research easier.
Discovering ETH, its people and its research through curated web data
Web data from 2017 and later are available in a heavily curated, structured format. This helps you find answers to various questions: When did a certain research project start and finish, what was the research topic and who was involved? How did the service providers present themselves? When did a specific event take place? This turns the Web Archive into a historical source about the development of ETH and its research and teaching over the past 26 years.
The new Archive-It platform
The Web Archive uses the Archive-It platform by the US provider external pageInternet Archive. This cloud-based service makes all metadata and the full-text search engine available in full compliance with the ISO standard for digital archiving. In addition, the University Archives has acquired all ethz.ch data since 1997 from Internet Archive.
The ETH Zurich University Archives
As the “Memory of ETH Zurich”, the University Archives is open to researchers and all interested parties. It preserves, indexes and presents all documents of ETH Zurich and the ETH Board that are of lasting value. It also looks after personal scientific papers and items documenting scientific and university history.