World librarians, archivists rush to save Ukraine's digital history - The Washington Post | April 2022

"Using open source tools and Slack, these volunteers have backed up everything from the country’s historical records and census data to children’s poems and basket weaving techniques.... Large parts of the Internet get periodically archived through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which partners with the organization, but SUCHO’s organizers also needed something more advanced, Dombrowski said. In many cases, the Wayback Machine can dig into the first or second layer of a website, she added, but many documents, like pictures and uploaded files, on Ukraine’s cultural websites could be seven or eight layers deep, inaccessible to traditional web crawlers. To do that, they turned to a suite of open source digital archiving tools called Webrecorder, which have been around since the mid 2010s, and used by institutions including the United Kingdom’s National Archive and the National Library of Australia. They also started a global Slack channel to communicate with volunteers. To archive, volunteers mostly use the Webrecorder suite, organizers said. There is Archive.webpage, a browser extension and stand-alone desktop app that archives a website as people browse pages. Another is Browsertrix Crawler, which requires some basic coding skills, and is helpful for “advanced crawls,” such as capturing expansive websites that might have multiple features like calendars, 3D tours, or circuitous links for navigating in-site. And more recently, there is Browsertrix Cloud, a more easy to use, automated version of the powerful Browswertrix crawler, which is popular with volunteers.... Over the past month, SUCHO has developed systematic, and creative, way to go about its work. There’s a master spreadsheet where volunteers detail all the Ukrainian museums, libraries, and archives that need to have their websites backed up or ones that have been completed. To develop this list, SUCHO’s organizers receive tips from librarians and archivists across the world who may know of a rare museum in Ukraine that needs to have its work backed up. Other volunteers have become sleuths, using Google Maps to take a digital walk down Ukrainian streets, looking for any signs that might say “museum” or “library” and trying to find out if it has a website that needs archiving...." Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO)