Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
102 lines (84 loc) · 5.35 KB

index.md

File metadata and controls

102 lines (84 loc) · 5.35 KB
layout title permalink
page
/

Purpose

The End of Term Web Archive captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. We are currently accepting URL nominations for the End of Term 2024 Web Archive.

[![whitehouse.gov capture from September 15, 2008 includes image of President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush, joined by President John Agyekum Kufuor and Mrs. Theresa Kufuor of Ghana](/assets/img/whitehouse_2008.jpg)][whitehouse_2008]
[![whitehouse.gov capture from March 21, 2013 includes image of President Barack Obama speaking to workers](/assets/img/whitehouse_2013.jpg)][whitehouse_2013]
[![whitehouse.gov capture from February 3, 2017 includes image of President Donald Trump with hand on Holy Bible being sworn in with Melania Trump](/assets/img/whitehouse_2017.jpg)][whitehouse_2017]
[![whitehouse.gov capture from February 5, 2021 includes image of President Joseph Biden at podium in front of American flag](/assets/img/whitehouse_2021.jpg)][whitehouse_2021]
Whitehouse.gov captures from: September 15, 2008; March 21, 2013; February 3, 2017; and February 5, 2021.

Archive Scope

The End of Term Web Archive contains federal government websites (.gov, .mil, etc) in the Legislative, Executive, or Judicial branches of the government. Websites that were at risk of changing (i.e., whitehouse.gov) or disappearing altogether during government transitions were captured. Local government websites, or any other site not part of the federal government domain were out of scope.

U.S. Federal Government Domain End of Term 2024 Web Archive

For the End of Term 2024, partners have joined efforts again to preserve public United States Government websites at the conclusion of the presidential administration ending January 20, 2025. This web harvest -- like its predecessors in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 -- is intended to document the federal government's presence on the World Wide Web during the transition of presidential administrations and to enhance the existing collections of the partner institutions.

This broad comprehensive crawl of the .gov domain includes as many federal .gov sites as we could find, plus federal content in other domains (such as .mil, .com, and social media content) and FTP'd datasets.

Nominations made by individual URL for inclusion in the End of Term Presidential Harvest 2024 are availabe to view in the Nomination Tool. URLs submitted for consideration in bulk form via files were added to a separate bulk Nomination Tool instance. The files containing the bulk list URLs have also been added to a GitHub repository.

Viewing the EOT Collections on the Wayback Machine

Content archived as part of the EOT project is being made available by the Internet Archive in their Wayback Machine. To search for and view historical snapshots of government websites:

  1. Go to web.archive.org.
  2. Scroll to the "Collection Search" area and select your desired End of Term (EOT) collection, such as: "End Of Term (US Gov 2024)" from the dropdown.
  3. Type in keywords (for example, a federal agency's name) or a URL.
  4. Hit "SEARCH" and visit the resulting archived web pages.

EOT collection search in Wayback Machine

What's in the EOT Collections?

Each EOT collection houses a wide range of file types preserved in WARC files, including:

  • HTML files
  • Images (JPEG, PNG, GIF)
  • PDF documents
  • Spreadsheets (CSV, Excel, etc.)
  • Videos and other multimedia
  • GeoJSON and other specialized formats

Downloading Bulk WARC Files

If you want to dive deeper or keep a local copy of the EOT content, on our data page you'll find bulk WARC files from past EOT projects (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) and, eventually, the 2024 collection. Downloading WARC Files supports:

  • Preservation: Keep your own copy safe and sound for future generations.
  • Exploration: Sift through historical data to uncover forgotten content.
  • Customized Research: Zero in on specific topics, agencies, or documents that intrigue you.
  • Analysis: Generate word clouds for dozens of domains, or seek out the government domain with the most preserved pages.