WAIL: Collection-Based Personal Web Archiving

Web Archiving Integration Layer (WAIL) is a desktop application written in Python that integrates Heritrix and OpenWayback. In this work we recreate and extend WAIL from the ground up to facilitate collection-based personal Web archiving. Our new iteration of the software, WAIL-Electron, leverages native Web technologies (e.g., JavaScript, Chromium) using Electron to open new potential for Web archiving by individuals in a stand-alone cross- platform native application. By replacing OpenWayback with PyWb, we provide a novel means for personal Web archivists to curate collections of their captures from their own personal computer rather than relying on an external archival Web service. As extended features we also provide the ability for a user to monitor and automatically archive Twitter users' feeds, even those requiring authentication, as well as provide a reference implementation for integrating a browser-based preservation tool into an OS native application.