Announcing the first ever Archive-It US Government Shutdown Notice Awards!

On October 1st, the Archive-It team began archiving the home pages of federal agencies impacted by the government shutdown. It was important to capture these URLs quickly and frequently during the shutdown, as they are likely to disappear once an agreement has been made and the federal government re-opens. A similar approach was taken during our collection of the SOPA Blackout in 2012. Many of these sites, prior to the shutdown, were archived in their totality by the Internet Archive’s Global Wayback Machine and through numerous Archive-It partners such as the Government Printing Office. For this collection we focused on archiving the timely shutdown messages rather than a complete capture of the site.

Each government agency was left to their own devices to prepare for the shutdown on their web presence- and the results vary. Some websites shutdown altogether, leaving only a notice that services have stopped. Others created unique graphics to represent the impending shutdown. A few integrated notices within their site to an almost comic degree.
We solicited help in identifying sites impacted by the shutdown through social media, and we were pleased to have so many of our colleagues in the library and archivist community come together and nominate URLs. As a result we were able to accumulate over 80 URLs for the collection, including home pages, Facebook status updates, and tweets. You can view the entire collection on Archive-it.org here: 2013 Government Shutdown Collection.

Here are some of our favorites, worthy of the Archive-It US Government Shutdown Notice Awards! Congratulations to all the winners, and like so many, we look forward to a resolution that allows our colleagues and all federal workers to return to work as soon as possible.

Drum roll please…….

Award for Classiest Shutdown Notice: Department of Justice