2005/12/16 by Frank McCown, Joan A. Smith, McCown, Frank +5
Computer Science · #Advanced Image and Video Retrieval Techniques #Caching and Content Delivery #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #H.3.5 #Information Retrieval (cs.IR) #Web Data Mining and Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cs/0512069
openalex publication_date 2005/12/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Backup or preservation of websites is often not considered until after a catastrophic event has occurred. In the face of complete website loss, "lazy" webmasters or concerned third parties may be able to recover some of their website from the Internet Archive. Other pages may also be salvaged from commercial search engine caches. We introduce the concept of "lazy preservation"- digital preservation performed as a result of the normal operations of the Web infrastructure (search engines and caches). We present Warrick, a tool to automate the process of website reconstruction from the Internet Archive, Google, MSN and Yahoo. Using Warrick, we have reconstructed 24 websites of varying sizes and composition to demonstrate the feasibility and limitations of website reconstruction from the public Web infrastructure. To measure Warrick's window of opportunity, we have profiled the time required for new Web resources to enter and leave search engine caches.