(The following post is by Charlotte Giles, South Asia Reference Librarian, Asian Division.)

This is an announcement of the release of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation’s (IPLC) Global Social Responses to Covid-19 Web Archive. The web archive represents a wide range of websites related to Covid-19 that are maintained by residents of all parts of the world: Africa; East Asia; Eastern Europe, Russia, and other territories of the former Soviet Union; Latin America and the Caribbean; the Middle East and North Africa; Oceania; and South and Southeast Asia. The coverage includes regional and social responses to the pandemic, which shed light on the scope of the pandemic’s humanitarian, socioeconomic, and cultural impacts. The archive has captured sites that are no longer available, or at risk, making this a collection of high importance to researchers.

A screenshot of the Ivy Plus Global Social Responses to Covid-19.

South Asia and Southeast Asia reference librarians from the Asian Division at the Library of Congress worked with colleagues in the U.S. and around the world to nominate websites for the Ivy Plus Global Responses to Covid-19 Web Archive. For South Asia, the Asian Division’s Charlotte Giles contributed websites reflecting localized and grassroots responses to the pandemic, including responses from NGOs, artists, blogs, social media, news sources in multiple local languages, webinars, bibliographies, and other community-driven initiatives. Ryan Wolfson-Ford and Joshua Kueh, both Southeast Asia reference librarians in the Asian Division, focused on civil society websites (e.g., NGOs, private news agencies, artists, individual commentators) from Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, among others. Contributions from Asian Division staff envision the Ivy Plus collection as a complement to the forthcoming Library of Congress Covid-19 Web Archive, which highlights government policies and responses to the pandemic.

At the time of its release in March 2021, this collection is the largest web archive in the IPLC Web Collecting Program. There are currently over 4,000 websites from more than 80 countries in over 50 languages. Also of note is that this is a live collection. Nominators are continuing to add new websites to the collection, and websites already in the collection are being updated with fresh captures. Researchers are, therefore, encouraged to revisit the collection to find those ongoing additions. Unlike the year-long embargo policy required for web archiving at the Library of Congress, Archive-It – a partner of the program – permits immediate access to its archived websites.

Researchers are recommended to use this collection alongside the Library of Congress’ upcoming coronavirus web archive collection, which focuses on the effects of the pandemic in the U.S. as well as across the globe. More information about the Library’s collecting efforts related to COVID-19 may be found in this blog. The Library of Congress is also a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium with its own Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection, also available through Archive-It. Archive-It is a web archiving service working with academic, federal, state or local libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions.

A screenshot of the Ivy Plus Global Social Responses to Covid-19 research guide on the Princeton University Library website.The leaders and nominators of the collection have compiled a research guide available through the Princeton University Library webpage. This guide will assist researchers searching for specific websites through the metadata unique to this collection. Researchers may filter their search by geographic area, country, language, category, organization type, and format. Archive-It allows full-text search, too.

Each entry details the metadata and number of captures. Click on the URL to access the archive. The next screen is a list of the dates of the captures. Most websites were captured on a monthly basis. Once you select a date, the next screen will take you to the interactive capture of the website. The yellow bar at the top of the page signifies you are in the archive and will give you additional information about the capture you have selected.

Examples of metadata filters

Examples of metadata filters

For those researchers who are interested in nominating websites for addition to the Ivy Plus Coronavirus Collection, please use this Google form.

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