Project

What is the Portuguese Web Archive?

It's a public non-profit service that aims to preserve for future access the information published on the Web of clear interest for the Portuguese community.

What can it be used for?

It can be used for:

• searching information from the past that is no longer available on the Web
• providing research resources, for instance, in the fields of History, Sociology or Linguistics

What motivated its creation?

After 1 year, only 20% of a set of addresses remain valid (Ntoulas, 2004). That is, 8 out of 10 of the pages that you saved on your browser Favorites will be lost after 1 year.

The amount of information that is published solely on the web has grown dramatically over the past few years. However, not long after it has been published, a large amount of this information ceases to be available online and is irrevocably lost.

If we wish future generations to have access to this information, it is important to archive and preserve what is published on the web.

What is the difference between Web and Internet?

The Internet is the communication infrastructure that link computers worldwide. There are several services on the Internet. The Web is one of them. Other services are, for instance:

• email
• chats
• VOIP

The Web consists of pages and contents connected by hyperlinks. One may say that the Internet is equivalent to the roads, and the Web, email and other services are the different vehicles in circulation.

What is the difference between the Portuguese Web Archive and the Internet Archive?

 The Portuguese Web archive provides:

• comprehensive crawls of the Portuguese Web
• search by term and address (URL)
• possibility of automatic computation of the archived data for research purposes

The Web Archive:

• collects contents worldwide and partially the Portuguese Web
• only allows search by address (URL)
• does not currently provide research support
  

Do you have any published statistics regarding the Portuguese Web?

Yes. The characteristics of the Portuguese Web were studied from a crawl performed in 2008. Several scientific papers have been published.

Is it possible to access the data for research purposes?

Yes. If you want to perform studies on the archived data, feel free to contact us.

Can I help preserve the Portuguese Web?

Yes. Anyone can collaborate with the Portuguese Web Archive:

• lending space to keep backup copies of the archived data
• suggesting Portuguese sites to be archived
• following the recommendations for web authors to enable web archiving
• supplying historical Portuguese web contents
• taking part in the research and development activities
• promoting the project
  

Another question about the Portuguese Web Archive?

If you have not found the answer to your question, feel free to contact us.