README.md

August 10, 2026 · View on GitHub

ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛ ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴏɴ

  • Our project aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the zim container format, compared to warc, the existing web archiving standard.

  • We've run crawls on FFmprovisr, an FFmpeg resource, and archived the site as both ffmprovisr.zim and ffmprovisr.warc.

  • By comparing key features, we may help inform archivists who have an interest in utilizing the zim format for their projects.

ᴡʜʏ ᴢɪᴍ?

The preservation of web resources, like a Github repository, for offline access may prove to be an important skill for digital archivists. The zim format is highly compressed and lossless, preserving quality without occupying a ton of disk space. Additionally, zim enables fulltext search; thus, any personal library can function like an offline search engine.

Together, the Kiwix and OpenZim projects have utilized the format to make resources like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Stack Exchange and Ask Ubuntu, accesible and searchable. These open source tools have led to many indvidual archive projects. In 2025, a zim of cdc.gov was contributed to Internet Archive 🏛.

By compiling a URL source into an offline-accessible format, zim may be particularly useful for archivists and librarians encountering:

  • little or no internet access
  • limited electricity (online browsing drains power!)
  • disaster-related restrictions
  • the censorship or deletion of online materials

Some other considerations include:

  • archival backups
  • providing research or access copies of archived sites

ᴄᴏɴᴛʀɪʙᴜᴛᴏʀꜱ

  • stp305-source (Jamie)
  • pgaston99 (Phoenyx)
  • hmr9162-droid (Hayla)

We are Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) students at NYU. During our studies, we became interested in the potential uses of zim for archivists and in promoting access to online tools.

ᴄᴏɴᴛʀɪʙᴜᴛɪɴɢ

You are encouraged to experiment and contribute zim or warc files to this repository of archiving resources!

Bug fixes and or other additions are also welcome. To contribute to this project directly clone this repository and create a new branch (git checkout -b your-branch-name) then upload your file to docs or modify the index.html. Then submit a pull request and the code will be reviewed and integrated.

ꜱᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛꜱ

ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛ ᴜᴛɪʟɪᴢᴇꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴏʟʟᴏᴡɪɴɢ ʀᴇꜱᴏᴜʀᴄᴇꜱ:

Warc: Repository of warc format specifications

OpenZim: MediaWiki for the openZim project

OpenZim: Repository for zim tools

Kiwix: Kiwix offline zim reader repository

FFmprovisr: Repository of useful FFmpeg command lines for archivists!

The Cable Bible: A Guide to Cables and Connectors Used for Audiovisual Tech

If you contribute a zim of an archiving resource to our repository, we will link to the original webpage here!

ᴢɪʙʟɪᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜʏ

📚 A collection of zim literature and related web archiving research:

Al-Khmisy, R., Hosman, L., & Nova, R. (2023). Curating an Offline Wikipedia for Schools in any Language: A Road Map. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 18(21), 129–148. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v18i21.44313

Aturban, Mohamed. "A Framework for Verifying the Fixity of Archived Web Resources" (2020). Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dissertation, Computer Science, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/pc8d-y213 https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/computerscience_etds/125

Berlin, J., Kelly, M., Nelson, M. L., & Weigle, M. C. (2023). To Re-experience the Web: A Framework for the Transformation and Replay of Archived Web Pages. ACM Trans. Web, 17(4). https://doi.org/10.1145/3589206

Brügger, Niels. Archiving Websites: General Considerations and Strategies. Aarhus, Denmark: The Centre for Internet Research, 2005. http://cfi.au.dk/fileadmin/www.cfi.au.dk/publikationer/archiving_underside/archiving.pdf

International Internet Conservation Consortium. “ Zstandard Compression of Warc Files 1.0 Proposed.” Warc Specifications. Accessed December 5, 2025. https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-zstd/

Phillips, Mark Edward; Phillips, Kristy & Alam, Sawood. Content-Based Characterization of the End of Term Web Archive, article, September 2023; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2201623/: accessed December 11, 2025),

“Recommended Formats Statement - Resources (Preservation, Library of Congress),” www.loc.gov, n.d., https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/.

“Verifying the Index Using Xapian-Delve — Getting Started with Xapian V1.4.1.” 2018. Readthedocs.io. 2018. https://getting-started-with-xapian.readthedocs.io/en/latest/practical_example/indexing/verifying_the_index.html.