Launch of the Government of Canada Web Archive (GCWA)
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will launch the "Government of Canada Web Archive" on November 20, 2007. The site can be found at:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/
The Library and Archives of Canada Act received Royal Assent on April 22, 2004, allowing Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to collect and preserve a representative sample of Canadian websites. To meet its new mandate, LAC began to harvest the Web domain of the Federal Government of Canada starting in December 2005. As resources permit, this harvesting activity will be undertaken on a semi-annual basis. The harvested website data is stored in the "Government of Canada Web Archive" (GCWA). Client access to the content of the GCWA is provided through searching full text by keyword, by department name and by URL.
It is also possible to search by specific format type, (e.g., *.PDF). By the fall 2007, approximately 100 million digital objects (over 4
terabytes) of archived federal government website data will be made accessible via the LAC website.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has implemented this first significant Canadian Web archive through the use of open source tools, developed by the International Internet Preservation Consortium (http://www.netpreserve.org), of which LAC is a member. The goal of this organization is to collect, preserve and ensure long-term access to Internet content from around the world through the collaborative development of common tools and techniques for developing Web archives.