From archive to analysis: accessing web archives at scale through a cloud-based interface

Abstract

This paper introduces the Archives Unleashed Cloud, a web-based interface for working with web archives at scale. Current access paradigms, largely driven by the scope and scale of web archives, generally involve using the command line and writing code. This access gap means that subject-matter experts, as opposed to developers and programmers, have few options to directly work with web archives beyond the page-by-page paradigm of the Wayback Machine. Drawing on first-hand research and analysis of how scholars use web archives, we present the interface design and underpinning architecture of the Archives Unleashed Cloud. We also discuss the sustainability implications of providing a cloud-based service for researchers to analyze their collections at scale.