Where Fashion Meets Science: Collecting and Curating a Creative Web Archive

Working closely with the donors, UAL have been collecting the websites of the Helen Storey Foundation Archive, which charts the 30-year history and development of a former not-for-profit arts organisation promoting creativity and innovation.

The Archive includes design illustrations, correspondence, press and publicity material, material samples, and finished garments, as well as project websites created by the Foundation and their project partners. Like the wider collection, the websites themselves chart a succession of innovative projects which bring together the worlds of arts and science, using fashion to explore complex global issues.
However, the agreement to collect the archive and its web-based content was granted prior to the development of any formal in-house web archiving programme. This presented significant challenges for staff tasked with meeting the requirements of the donation agreement. Although we had recently developed a digital preservation programme, the programme, policies and workflows focused on our existing digital archives and collections. It had not been extended to include robust consideration for web archives.

Harnessing the ability of the Archive to educate and inspire, we developed a web archiving project in response to the demands of the donation. We trialled new approaches, including experimenting with the use of open-source tools such as Conifer and ReplayWeb.page, to build the collection of websites to sit alongside the related physical materials.
The theme of collaboration is present in all the prominent projects represented in the Archive. The work of the Foundation often involved partnering with scientists, to explore issues such as climate change and the role of plastics in fashion. Sharing that same ethos, we looked for ways of collaborating with the donors, to bring them along with us on the learning journey, as we developed our web archiving approach. We celebrated milestones with stakeholders, whilst also sharing honest insights into the curatorial challenges of collecting and making accessible both legacy and contemporary websites, such as the loss of access to sites during capture stages or limited capture of dynamic content. We shared the project with them through introductions to web archiving practices, live demos of the tools in use, and feedback sessions.

The Archive itself is a source of inspiration for the next generation of fashion creatives, and we hope our project response will inspire future web archiving projects and further considerations of ways to engage internal and external stakeholders in the creation and curation of web archives.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypN9sEmL...