Use Cases for Access to Internet Archives
International Internet Preservation Consortium, (May 2006)Abstract
Archives of material published on the Internet are still in their infancy; the oldest archive (www.archive.org) is a mere 10 years old. In order to gain a better understanding of the expectations and requirements users of Internet archives are likely to have, this report identifies and specifies a number of possible usage scenarios of an Internet archive. Attempts at predicting usage of new technologies are by nature uncertain and likely to miss important applications. The list of usage scenarios presented in this report should thus be considered an opening statement in an ongoing dialogue with relevant user groups. It must always be considered that access will very much depend on the legal foundation of each web archive.
This report, conducted by the Access Tools Working Group of the IIPC, relates to the Prototype report that is based on some of the usage scenarios and attempts to illustrate what interfaces may be needed by developing mock-up prototypes of the functional components suggested by the use cases.