Special collection to preserve content related to the Autárquicas 2021 took place between August and October. The work resulted in the preservation of 31 million files.
"Thousands of electoral pages to be preserved before they disappear". This is how Arquivo.pt defined the mission of its project to collect and preserve content related to the 2021 local elections that took place on 26 September.
"Online information documenting electoral processes is of manifest historical importance. However, it is difficult to identify because it appears and disappears quickly. In the case of local elections, the number of candidates and the variety of channels used makes the task even more challenging," highlights Arquivo.pt on its website.
For that reason, as in previous elections, Arquivo.pt launched a special collection to preserve contents related to this vote. The collection was carried out from the manual identification of contents by municipalities and parishes, with the help of several people and organizations.
The process, which took place between 22 August and 8 October 2021, involved a campaign to collect addresses and collaboration with the archive services of national municipalities (in identifying electoral sites and candidates), as well as contact with parties to send the names of candidates heading the list.
The methodology, which had already been applied to the presidential elections (2021) and European elections (2019), also included information sources such as Wikipedia and the website Eyedata - Social Data Laband also preserved the automatic searches on Bing with the most relevant contents (such as news, campaign initiatives or the official page of your electoral campaign).
The resulting collection called " Municipal Elections 2021" (EAWP39)gathers 31 million files totalling 2.7 TeraBytes of information and will be available from October 2022 onwards, respecting the embargo period of 1 year. All researchers who intend to carry out studies about the Autárquicas 2021 and need to have earlier access to the gathered contents may contact Arquivo.pt.
