This website serves as an information platform about the activities and collections of the Luxembourg Web Archive. Browsing the actual archive is only possible from within the National library of Luxembourg. To find out more, please check out our FAQs.
The National Library collects and preserves the Luxembourg web as part of our digital heritage
Always changing
A common misconception is that the contents of the Internet will stay available for eternity. In reality, 80 % of all websites will no longer be available in the same form, or have completely disappeared within a year. Moreover 10 % of all social media contents are lost every year, showing that the web is not only changing at a rapid pace, but is also short-lived.
A unique source of information
The web is a unique source of information.
With the growing emphasis on digitalization in all aspects of society, more and more information is solely published online, making its distribution and accessibility faster and easier. On the other hand, the lack of physical copies of publications accentuates the dangers of data loss. Relevant information, discussions and data that are not printed or preserved in any other shape or form could be lost, depriving future generations of the sources of knowledge available to us today.
The reflection of a diverse society
From its conception, the Internet has always been centered around a culture of exchange, communication and an open, participatory approach to making information available to everyone. The convenience of using and contributing content on the web, as well as more recent developments such as social media, are adding to the concept of the Internet as an all-encompassing universe, reflecting all facets of society and cultures in the world. All the more reason to preserve a piece of this universe, by archiving the Luxembourg web – not only to ensure the availability of websites, but also to provide a means of analyzing the importance and influence of society on the Internet and vice versa.
Our mission
The National Library of Luxembourg is open to all, presenting its patrimonial collections on a national and international level. Empowering scientific research and facilitating the access to information, the National Library is a pillar of the knowledge society. As a patrimonial library, the BnL collects, preserves and catalogues all publications issued in Luxembourg, as well as foreign publications in relation with the Grand-Duchy. The National Library aims to drive innovation in new technologies and library management as an academic and scientific library. This assignment not only covers printed media, but also digital publications of all kind, including the Luxembourg web.
As a component of the digital legal deposit, harvesting the web ensures the long term access to the contents of the Internet which are publicly available. Overall, the LWA operates in an inclusive, rather than exclusive collection policy, in the sense that the legal deposit applies to Luxembourg publishers, which the BnL interprets as:
All websites in the “.lu” top level domain
Websites published in Luxembourg
Websites hosted on servers in Luxembourg
Websites published by non-resident Luxembourg citizens or websites in relation with Luxembourg
Although these websites are not part of the Luxembourg legal deposit, the National Library might choose to include websites that are relevant to the national digital heritage.
As it is the case for all national web archives, this mandate does not translate to an obligation of completeness, due to the extent and feasibility of these tasks. The legal deposit for paper obliges publishers to hand in their publications to the National Library. In the case of websites, the obligation for publishers is fulfilled if the BnL is able to access and harvest their websites.
Article 9 et Article 10 de la Loi modifiée du 25 juin 2004
portant réorganisation des instituts culturels de l’Etat
Règlement grand-ducal du 6 novembre 2009 relatif au dépôt légal, modifié par le règlement grand-ducal du 21 décembre 2017
Participate and contribute
Saving websites is not only a service to the general public but a service to site owners in the first place. If you have a website or contribute content in any form, let us know about it. If you see a website you think should be saved for the future, tell us about it. Using the form linked below will take less than a minute and improve the services of the Luxembourg Web Archive for everyone.
Suggest a website
To the form
Contact
37D, avenue John F. Kennedy. L-1855 Luxembourg
(+352) 26 559 351
International cooperations
IIPC – International Internet Preservation Consortium
IIPC members are organizations from over 45 countries, including national, university and regional libraries and archives. The mission of the IIPC is to acquire, preserve and make accessible knowledge and information from the Internet for future generations everywhere, promoting global exchange and international relations.
To achieve its mission, the IIPC is working to accomplish the following goals: To enable the collection of a rich body of Internet content from around the world to be preserved in a way that it can be archived, secured and accessed over time. To foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards that enable the creation of international archives. To encourage and support national libraries, archives and research organisations everywhere to address Internet archiving and preservation.
The BnL is a member of the IIPC since 2017.
DPC – Digital Preservation Coalition
The DPC enables its members to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services, helping them to derive enduring value from digital assets and raising awareness of the strategic, cultural and technological challenges they face. These aims are achieved through advocacy, community engagement, workforce development, capacity-building, good practice and good governance.
DPC members share the belief that thoughtful preservation creates the conditions in which optimal value can be delivered from digital collections. Therefore digital preservation is a necessary and achievable social and organisational good.
The BnL is a member of the DPC since 2018.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, is a non-profit organisation, offering free access to “a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form”. It’s main ambition is nothing less than “to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge”. The Internet Archive has been a partner and service provider to the Luxembourg Web Archive in the large scale domain crawls, as well as in event-based collections.
The BnL has been working with the Internet Archive since 2016.
WARCnet – Web ARChive studies network researching web domains and events
IThe aim of WARCnet is to rise to this challenge by providing a network for promoting high quality national and transnational research that will help us to understand the history of (trans)national web domains and of transnational events on the web, drawing on the increasingly important digital cultural heritage held in national web archives. Since the relevant national research environments are still very small, international networking and collaboration is imperative to reach a critical mass; in addition, for the field to develop beyond the few first movers, it is important to pay particular attention to including the next generation of early career researchers.
The BnL is a member of the IIPC since 2020.
HIVI – A history of online virality
Entitled “A history of online virality” (HIVI), this project (2021-2024), which is led Valérie Schafer at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) / University of Luxembourg and supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (C20/SC/14758148), aims to reveal, historicise and communicate about this intangible experience and the heritage of viral content. HIVI will develop a historical framework that informs the analytics of virality and rumours and improves our understanding of current phenomena, some of which are strongly related to past digital cultures. Building on the legacy of past Web cultures as a means of shedding light on current trends, it will explore the history of virality by combining a general narrative with case studies dedicated to precise viral phenomena and their dissemination through time and space, in order to better contextualise them. Drawing on a broad corpus of born-digital heritage, which is maintained online and in Web archiving institutions, HIVI also provides an opportunity to test and deepen digital methods and to refine digital hermeneutics.
hivi.uni.luCOFFEE BREAK
We made the news! Here are some articles about the Luxembourg Web Archive (some of which we wrote ourselves).
IIPC BLOGPOST
Investigate holdings of web archives through summaries: cdx-summarize
// 10.08.2022
IIPC BLOGPOST
The 2021 Web Archiving Conference in Luxembourg
// 02.07.2021
LUXEMBURGER WORT ARTICLE
Das Luxemburger
Webarchiv
// 17.06.2021
RADIO 100,7 INTERVIEW
Mois des archives:
Web Archive
// 14.06.2021
IIPC BLOGPOST
Collaborative collecting at webarchive.lu
// 22.02.2021
DPC BLOGPOST
Celebrating 2020’s Digital Preservation accomplishments at the BnL // 05.11.2020
DPCWARCNET PAPER
Exploring special web archive collections related to COVID-19
// 15.09.2020
IIPC BLOGPOST
The Luxembourg Web Archive – Coronavirus Response
// 23.06.2020
DPC BLOGPOST
Ingesting Web archives into Digital preservation systems
// 10.06.2020
RTL INTERVIEW
Nationalbibliothéik sicht Informatiounen iwwer Covid19 am Internet // 04.04.2020
RTLRTL INTERVIEW
Konferenz “Content at risk” an der Nationalbibliothéik
// 25.02.2020
TÉLÉCRAN ARTICLE
Das Web ist viel vergänglicher als andere Medien
// January 2020
RADIO 100,7 INTERVIEW
BNL sammelt elo och Websäiten
// 09.01.2020
DPC BLOGPOST
Capturing the Luxembourg Elections
// 14.05.2019