Consortial Action to Preserve Born-Digital, Web-Based Art History & Culture

FAIN: PW-277630-21

Internet Archive (San Francisco, CA 94129-1711)
Lori Donovan (Project Director: July 2020 to April 2023)
Thomas Padilla (Project Director: April 2023 to April 2025)

Development of a reference resource of born-digital art historical records such as artist and gallery websites and web-published catalogs. Through the project, Internet Archive would develop an access portal to these web-archived collections, formalize standards and priorities for consortium members doing the web-archiving work, and develop datasets related to the resource and tutorials for using them. 

The Internet Archive, partnering with the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), which consists of the Frick Art Reference Library, MoMA, and Brooklyn Museum, proposes a two-year, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation grant from the NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access. This funding will create a comprehensive reference resource of the nation’s key art history and humanities collections published on the web. The activities of this grant will mobilize a diverse, national group of art and museum libraries to coordinate curation and the creation of a unified access research portal of web-based arts content.

Associated Products

CARTA (Collaborative Art Archive) (Web Resource)
Title: CARTA (Collaborative Art Archive)
Author: Thomas Padilla
Author: Sumitra Duncan
Author: Sarah Beth Seymore
Author: Jefferson Bailey
Abstract: The Internet Archive and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have spearheaded this collaborative project aimed at capturing and preserving at-risk web-based art materials. CARTA is a collaborative entity of art libraries building collections of archived web-based content related to art history and contemporary art practice. Through this collaborative approach, the project leverages shared infrastructure, expertise and collecting activities amongst participating organizations, scaling the extent of web-published, born-digital materials preserved and accessible for art scholarship and research. The goals are to promote streamlined access to art reference and research resources, enable new types of scholarly use for art-related materials, and ensure that the art historical record of the 21st century is readily accessible far into the future.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://carta.archive-it.org/
Primary URL Description: The Internet Archive and the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) have spearheaded this collaborative project aimed at capturing and preserving at-risk web-based art materials. CARTA is a collaborative entity of art libraries building collections of archived web-based content related to art history and contemporary art practice. Through this collaborative approach, the project leverages shared infrastructure, expertise and collecting activities amongst participating organizations, scaling the extent of web-published, born-digital materials preserved and accessible for art scholarship and research. The goals are to promote streamlined access to art reference and research resources, enable new types of scholarly use for art-related materials, and ensure that the art historical record of the 21st century is readily accessible far into the future.

CARTA: Promoting Computational Research with Art on the Web (Report)
Title: CARTA: Promoting Computational Research with Art on the Web
Author: Thomas Padilla
Author: Sumitra Duncan
Author: Karl Blumenthal
Author: Sarah Beth Seymore
Abstract: From 2021-2023, staff spanning the Internet Archive and the Frick Art Reference Library of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) worked to foster the development of a national network of art museums and libraries that has come to be known as CARTA (Collaborative ART Archive)* under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities supported, Consortial Action to Preserve Born-Digital, Web-Based Art History & Culture. Leveraging the nonprofit infrastructure and services of the Internet Archive, 41 diverse art museums and libraries comprising CARTA expanded the ability of art and cultural heritage organizations to collaboratively collect and provide access to essential, ephemeral, born-digital art resources on the web (e.g., art gallery communications, exhibition catalogs, artist websites). To date, CARTA members have preserved and made accessible over 900 web-based art resources, totaling over 13 TB of data with continued growth. In addition to providing unified access to CARTA’s collaborative collecting effort through the CARTA Portal,? CARTA also promoted the research potential of collections the group developed through a series of workshops (i.e., datathons) and virtual training focused on computational research with web archive data. Given that art libraries as well as a broader community of libraries and museums seek to encourage computational use of their collections, the project team felt it would be useful to share the project team’s approach and lessons learned.
Date: 9/23/2023
Primary URL: https://archive.org/details/carta_promoting_computational_research
Primary URL Description: From 2021-2023, staff spanning the Internet Archive and the Frick Art Reference Library of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) worked to foster the development of a national network of art museums and libraries that has come to be known as CARTA (Collaborative ART Archive)* under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities supported, Consortial Action to Preserve Born-Digital, Web-Based Art History & Culture. Leveraging the nonprofit infrastructure and services of the Internet Archive, 41 diverse art museums and libraries comprising CARTA expanded the ability of art and cultural heritage organizations to collaboratively collect and provide access to essential, ephemeral, born-digital art resources on the web (e.g., art gallery communications, exhibition catalogs, artist websites). To date, CARTA members have preserved and made accessible over 900 web-based art resources, totaling over 13 TB of data with continued growth. In addition to providing unified access t
Access Model: open access

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