Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 5, 2025

Using Generative Art to Convey Past and Future Climate Transitions
Published on: March 31, 2023
Keeping it under lock and keywords: exploring new ways to open up the web archives with notebooks
Leontien Talboom1,2, Mark Bell2
1University College London, London, UK.
Abstract:
The UK Government Web Archive (UKGWA) has been archiving government websites since 1996 and now holds regular snapshots of over 5000 sites. Currently, this material can be accessed through browsing or a simple keyword search interface on their website and has also been catalogued in The National Archives' online catalogue, Discovery. However, the scale of the UKGWA exposes the limits of the current search interface, and there is no facility to understand the archive in aggregate. This article seeks to go beyond the simple keyword search by exploring the data sources available, from APIs to web crawling, for computational analysis of the UKGWA. The article is accompanied by two Python Notebooks which present examples of analysis using each data source. Notebooks lower the technical barriers for the reader to explore and interpret the UKGWA as data, while surfacing the challenges around making web material computationally accessible.
Related Concept Videos
Archival Research
Spanning Openings in Brick Walls
Lintels are primary supports used to span openings and can be crafted from materials such as reinforced concrete, steel-reinforced brick masonry, or simple steel angles. These are straightforward to install and are typically concealed...
Newman Projections
The organic molecules rotate across the single bonds leading to numerous temporary three-dimensional structures of varying energy known as...
Extraction: Advanced Methods
The Arch of Aorta
Encircling the heart, the coronary arteries form a ring-like structure before...
Electron Microscope Tomography and Single-particle Reconstruction
Electron Tomography
Electron tomography can be performed either in TEM or STEM (scanning transmission...

