"The Past Web", available from September on b-on, a service managed by the FCT's FCCN unit, presents an up-to-date view of the digital preservation of the web, a subject that hasn't had a book published since 2006.   

The book provides practical information about web archives, offers inspiring examples, raises new challenges and shares results of recent research, on access methods that allow exploring the information of the past, now preserved by web archives.

Daniel Gomes, manager of Arquivo.pt, an Internet digital preservation service managed by the FCCN Unit of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), led the team of editors of the book "The Past Web - Exploring Web Archives". The publication is now available, until March 6, as an exclusive download for members of the b-on service, which is also managed by the FCCN Unit. 

This book addresses the Teaching and Research community and explores the theme of Digital Preservation of the Web, applied to various research areas - from Social Sciences to Media Studies, Information Sciences, Computer Science or History. One of the book's main goals is to support teachers in their mission to transmit innovative and adequate knowledge for digital literacy, as well as to be an aid in the training of professionals for the 21st century.  

The book is divided into 6 parts, in which we find different resources for accessing archived files on the Internet, from the 1990s to the present day. It is also possible to learn about techniques for preserving collective memory in the digital era, which strategies to use when selecting online content and what is the impact of web archives in the preservation of content with long years of history.  

b on 1 FCCN Computing Unit

Daniel Gomes also alerts to the need to include web archives in the school plan and underlines that there are several advantages in applying these contents in school curricula, as a way of acquiring digital skills and literacy.

An innovative detail that we find in this work is the fact that all the links cited are also preserved by Arquivo.pt, in order to ensure the validity of the references over time.

If you have access to the contents of b-on - the Online Knowledge Library - you can download this book for free, until 6 March 2022.  

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