Collaboration Made It Happen! The Kansas Archive-It Consortium

Abstract

This case study explores the formation, current membership, and future goals of the Kansas Archive-It Consortium (KAIC), one of the larger consortia contracting with the Web archiving service Archive-It. KAIC, which is composed of the state historical society and five public universities, has its foundation in a statewide culture of collaboration, and participants have agreed on an informal governance structure with a strong commitment to broadening accessible web resources for researchers. After establishing consortial consistency during its first two years, members have shared documentation with partners and are beginning to do collaborative collecting. In the future, the consortium will seek additional members and work with Archive-It to develop a consortial search tool. This web archiving collaborative has helped member institutions overcome challenges by having group discussions, sharing documentation and guidelines, and jointly serving a primary user group, Kansas residents.