Number of ".es" domains saved by the National Library up 5%

Number of ".es" domains saved by the National Library up 5%

22/11/2024
Biblioteca Nacional

The National Library of Spain (BNE) recently announced the ninth extensive archive collection of ".es" web domains managed by Red.es, a process that has allowed for more than two million web pages, exceeding 200 terabytes (TB) of data.

 

Under the agreement reached between both parties, the annual archive collections are carried out automatically using trackers that scan all websites from a list of domains provided by Red.es, a public body under the auspices of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, through the Secretariat of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence. This way, a broad global vision of the documentary record of the internet is obtained, preserved in the BNE since the year 2009 as part of the Spanish Web Archive. In 2024, this project celebrated 15 years as the official record of Spain's digital heritage, saving websites that allow us to understand our society while allowing future researchers to study it and contemporary events.

 

In 2024, the number of domains grew 5% compared to the previous year, exceeding 2,100,000 domains collected, implying an even greater number of websites. This annual growth comes at the same time as the technical challenge of improving the quality of screengrabs. With this proposition, the parameters of the robot were reviewed, adjusting the depth of the screen grab and reducing the external links to other domains, thus downloading more relevant information from each domain. This has allowed for the reduction of the execution time for works, reaching 71 days uninterrupted.

 

All the information conserved within the Spanish Web Archive, despite being found freely on the Internet, is subject to existing copyrights rules, therefore it can only be consulted using the computer terminals located in the different rooms of the National Library of Spain and the conservation centres of the different Autonomous Communities. However, on the online search page, users can check the websites that have been saved and how frequently.

 

Election coverage: an example of collaboration between the conservation centres and the National Library

 

The Spanish Web Archive and the conservation centres of the Autonomous Communities have collaborated on archiving coverage of regional elections held this year in the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia. The web conservation centres of the Autonomous Communities worked on a selection of websites for surveys, polls, electoral studies and electoral information. For the elections to the European Parliament on 9 June 2024, over 300 websites were saved. All the new collections can be checked through the online search option of the Spanish Web Archive.