From the College Democrats to the Falling Illini: Identifying, Appraising, and Capturing Student Organization Websites

For nearly a decade, student organizations have used the Internet to promote events, record activities, issue statements, and maintain officer rosters. Student websites are potentially an important resource for scholarship on twenty-first-century student experience, providing both evidence about the activities of the organizations and information about the student body. Based on findings from a multicomponent case study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this article analyzes the documentary value of student organization websites and discusses ways in which archivists can use offline browser technology to capture extracurricular activity more fully.