Conference Agenda

As web harvesting grows in scale and frequency, so does its environmental impact. Crawlers use bandwidth and computing power, and all that harvested data takes energy to store and maintain. Web archiving plays an essential role in preserving our digital culture and supporting research, but it also leaves a considerable carbon footprint that can not be ignored. As our reliance on digital preservation increases, finding ways to make these processes more efficient and environmentally responsible has become an important collective challenge.

This workshop invites IIPC members and the wider community to talk about how we can make web harvesting more environmentally sustainable. From smarter crawling techniques to collaboration that cuts down on duplication, we’ll explore how the web archiving community can align its work with broader sustainability goals without compromising the quality and integrity of our web archives.

Sustainability has become a growing priority for libraries, archives, and research institutions. As organizations move toward net-zero targets, web archiving programs should also start to examine their own energy use and storage practices more closely. This workshop responds to a pressing need to explore current sustainability practices and experiments and aims to identify opportunities to reduce energy use during crawling and storage. It offers a space to share what people are already trying, what’s working, and where we see opportunities to reduce our footprint, whether that’s through more efficient crawls, less redundant storage, or greener preservation strategies.

The workshop will kick off with the authors revisiting the talks that were given on this topic during last year’s Web Archiving Conference and highlighting the developments that have taken place since then. Coming from different institutional and professional backgrounds, the authors will demonstrate how approaches to green web harvesting vary across contexts while also showing the value of sharing insights and experiences.

After this introduction, the participants will form small breakout groups to discuss key aspects of sustainability in web harvesting. Topics include ideas for running crawlers more efficiently - like optimizing scope and timing - and strategies for storing and managing data. We’ll explore ways to collaborate across institutions to reduce overlap, and how to measure and report the environmental cost of our work. Additionally, we’ll consider the ethical and policy questions that come with balancing preservation goals and sustainability.

By the end, this session aims to build a shared understanding of what “sustainable web harvesting” can look like in practice. Together, we’ve explored current approaches to making web harvesting more sustainable and discussed best practices. We’ll gather practical ideas and recommendations - technical, organizational, and policy-related - and use the notes and key take-aways from the session as input for a set of community guidelines on sustainable web archiving, to be shared post-event. We hope the discussion will inspire interest in forming a small working group or shared resource on green web archiving, helping the conversation continue beyond the conference. Above all, the session will bring together people who care deeply about both preserving the web and environmental responsibility, fostering new collaborations and long-term awareness of sustainability within the web archiving community.