| Term | Definition |
| Acquisition |
For digital materials, see Capture |
| Authenticity |
The genuineness of a digital object. Verification of authenticity requires ascertaining that the object is
what it claims to be or is what the metadata associated with the object asserts it to be. Authenticity of a digital object is
determined in several ways including checksums, provenance, and digital signatures. |
| Automated Capture Tool |
See Crawler |
| Baseline Metadata |
Baseline metadata is machine-generated and captured by a crawler at the time of data capture. |
| Born-digital |
Created originally in digital format (i.e., a machine-readable format). Examples include scientific databases,
sensory data, digital photographs, and digital audio and video recordings. A born-digital resource may or may not have a counterpart
analog format but, if it does, the digital version existed prior to the counterpart. |
| Capture |
The process of copying digital information from the web to a repository for collection or archive purposes. |
| Collection |
A group of resources related by common ownership or a common theme or subject matter. A web collection consists of one
or more crawls that harvest a group of related websites (e.g., candidate websites for state election campaigns). Collections are owned and/or maintained by an
organization or institution. |
| Crawl |
The content associated with a web capture operation that is conducted by a crawler. |
| Crawler |
Software that explores the web and collects data about its contents. A crawler can also be configured to capture
web-based resources. It starts a capture process from a seed list of entry-point URLs (EPUs). |
| Curation Process |
Collection development for web-published materials includes the selection, curation, and preservation processes. In
this context, the curation process involves description, organization, presentation, maintenances, and deselection of the materials in the collection. |
| Dark Archive |
A digital archive to which no end user access is permitted. |
| Dark Web |
See Deep Web |
| Deep Web |
Resources available via the World Wide Web that are invisible to or inaccessible by crawlers. These resources may be
invisible or inaccessible to crawlers because they (a) are contained in a database or other data store, (b) require information
collected from the end-user before they are created, or (c) are password protected. |
| Digital Archive |
A digital collection for which an institution has agreed to accept long-term responsibility for preserving the
resources in the collection and for providing continual access to those resources in keeping with an archive's user access policies. |
| Digital Collection |
A collection consisting entirely of born-digital or digitized materials. |
| Digital Object |
Also called a digital information object. Digital objects can be interactive works (e.g., video games), sensory
presentations (e.g., music or audio), documents, and data. Two types of digital objects included in digital archives are: surrogates
of information objects in various original formats, (e.g., print books or audio tapes) and born-digital objects. |
| Dynamic Web Page |
A web page created automatically by software at the web server. The page may be (a) personalized for the user based
on identification via login or based on cookies stored on the user's computer, (b) tailored to fulfill a specific
request made by the user, or (c) code-generated (e.g., using php, jsp, asp, or xml). Information used for personalization or tailoring of pages may be retrieved
in real-time from a database or other data store. |
| Emulation |
A method by which newer software interacts with older resources and displays the result using the same commands
and formatting that the software that created the resource used. Emulation provides a means of allowing a digital resource to be
preserved without altering its binary format. |
| Enriched Metadata |
Enriched metadata is generally specific to an organization and contains a
mixture of baseline metadata and human-generated metadata added subsequent to data capture. |
| Entry-Point URL |
A URL appearing in a seed list as one of the starting addresses a web crawler uses to capture content.
Also called a targeted URL. |
| External Link |
A hyperlink which takes the user to a new website. For a web archive, an external link is one that takes the user
out of the archived collection. |
| Fixity |
The extent to which an archived object remains unchanged over time regardless of access and movement due to copying.
One common fixity mechanism used to establish and protect the integrity of a digital object (or data) is the result of a cyclical redundancy check (CRC).
Redundancy checks are sometimes referred to as checksums. |
| Harvest |
See Capture |
| Invisible Web |
See Deep Web |
| Light Archive |
A digital archive accessible to end-users. |
| Migration |
A method of preserving digital materials and access to those materials by copying or reformatting the materials
while preserving their intellectual content. |
| Persistent Name |
A unique name assigned to a web-based resource that will remain unchanged regardless of movement of the
resource from one location to another or changes to the resource's URL. Persistent names are resolved by a third party that maintains a map
of the persistent name to the current URL of the resource. |
| Repository |
The physical storage location and medium for one or more digital archives. A repository may contain an active
copy of an archive (i.e. one that is accessed by end users) or a mirror copy of an archive for disaster recovery. |
| Seed List |
One or more entry-point URLs from which a web crawler begins capturing web resources.
Curators, or others responsible for building collections of web-based resources, specify seed lists for specific crawls. |
| Spider |
See Crawler |
| Targeted URL |
See Entry-Point URL |
| Visibility |
The extent of end user access allowed to a digital archive. |
| Web Archive |
A collection of web-published materials that an institution has either made arrangements for or has accepted
long-term responsibility for preservation and access in keeping with an archive's user access policies. Some of these materials may also exist in other
forms but the web archive captures the web versions for posterity. |
| Web Archive Service |
Enables curators to build collections of web-published materials that are stored in either local and/or
remote repositories. The service includes a set of tools for selection, curation, and preservation of the archives. It also includes repositories for storage,
preservation services (e.g., replication, emulation, and persistent naming), and administrative services (e.g., templates for collection strategies, content
provider agreements, repository provider agreements.) |
| Web-published materials |
Web-published materials are accessed and presented via the World Wide Web. The materials span the cultural heritage
spectrum and include a range of material types from text documents to streaming video to interactive experiences. Web-published materials are both dynamic and
transient. They are at risk of disappearing. Web archives preserve web-published materials. |
