Web archives are an increasingly important resource for arts and humanities researchers, yet we have neither the expertise nor the tools to use them effectively. Both the data itself and the process of collection are poorly understood, and it is possible only to draw the broadest of conclusions from current analytical analysis. This project will work with the dataset derived from the UK domain crawl from 1996 to 2013 (that is, when legal deposit legislation was extended to cover digital materials), totalling approximately 65 terabytes and constituting many billions of words. For the arts and humanities, this is very big data indeed.

The project is a collaboration between the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and the Oxford Internet Institute. It is one of 21 big data projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities theme.