Web Archiving: The Anthropocene
The Libraries' collections are usually either items we purchased or gifts of rare books. However, the Libraries also curates and preserves important internet sites that reflect life and research at Penn. One topic the Libraries has curated in this way addresses the idea of the Anthropocene and the built environment. Penn works with its peers through the Ivy Plus Libraries Web Collecting Program to curate and preserve collections of ephemeral material that address current issues. We also purchase databases from vendors that collect such material at a larger scale, assuring that large internet-based document collections will be available for future students and scholars.
Collection Overview
The Anthropocene
The Anthropocene has different meanings. One is scientific, signifying a geological epoch meeting international geological and stratigraphical criteria as a new geological epoch and ending the Holocene. This epoch would mark crucial and verifiable human effects on the environment as reflected in geographical markers. The proposal to create the Anthropocene epoch was rejected by the relevant scientific bodies in 2024, but the argument and scientific concept remains.
The second meaning reflects the fact that our world is changing dramatically because of human activities. In this sense, Anthropocene can apply to philosophy, ecology, sustainability, politics, history, and many other fields. Likewise, items of relevance to the Anthropocene are sometimes categorized differently. For instance, works about the built environment and sustainability could be rightfully considered material directly relevant to the Anthropocene.
Web Archiving
The Libraries have a very large collection of books, journals, and other items about the Anthropocene. However, "the Anthropocene" is widely used in forms that are meant for a specialized scientific or general audience, and these are more likely to be on the internet than in any publication. For instance, museum exhibits designed around the idea of the Anthropocene are likely to only be documented on the internet and undistributed publications that the library can't acquire. Material of this sort can be acquired through librarians who curate such items and, in close collaboration with the Ivy Plus Libraries Web Collection Progam, pull them together as a permanent collection that is searchable and will continue to exist even if the original web sites are removed.
The Penn Librarians was involved in the curation of Ideas of the Anthropocene, which includes the web page of the "Working Group on the Anthropocene," but also scientific blogs in which experts provided informal commentary on the process and decision. In addition, the collection includes cultural and humanistic websites organized on the theme of the Anthropocene. Sites on photography, poetry, critical theory, and architecture relating to the environmental effects of humanity and their current implications are included.
Years before "the Anthropocene" became famous, Penn librarians helped curate and create another web archive called CAUSEWAY (The Collaborative, Architecture, Urbanism, and Sustainability Web Archive.) It preserves websites devoted to the related topics of architecture, urban fabric, community development activism, public space, and sustainability. The material is related to the Anthropocene even if it doesn't use the term.
Web Archiving at Scale
Aside from these curated collections, the Libraries invests in products from a company called Coherent Digital, which published databases like Policy Commons. The product uses web crawlers and its technology to ingest, make discoverable, and preserve massive caches of digital documents from city government, think tanks, international and regional organizations, and related groups. As with the more curated web archives, this material is ephemeral and prone to disappearing from the Web. However, by ingesting it in bulk, these databases both preserve the material and create an option for identifying research-quality material in a more streamlined way that simply Googling.
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