2016-10-26: They should not be forgotten!

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Source: http://www.masrawy.com/News/News_
Various/details/2015/6/7/596077/أسرة-الشهيد-أحمد-بسيوني
-فوجئنا-بصورته-على-قناة-الشرق-والقناة-نرفض-التصريح
I remembered his face and smile very well. It was very tough for me to look at his smile and realize that he will not be in this world again. It got worse for me when I read his story and many others who had died defending the future of my home country, Egypt, hoping to draw a better future for their kids. Ahmed Basiony, one of Egypt’s great artists, was killed by the Egyptian Regime on the January 28th, 2011. One of the main reasons that drove Basiony to participate in the protests is filming police beatings to document the protests. While he was filming, he also used his camera during the demonstration to zoom on the soldiers and warn the people around him so they take cautions before they had gunfire. Suddenly, his camera fell down.

Basiony was a dad for two kids: one and six years old. He has been loved by everyone who knew him.  I hope Basiony's and others' stories will remain for future generations.


Basiony was among the protests in the first days of the Egypt Revolution.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?
fbid=206347302708907&set=a.139725092704462.24594.
100000009164407&type=3&theater
curl -I http://1000memories.com/egypt 
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found 
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 16:53:04 GMT 
Server: nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu) 
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8


Basiony's information and many other martyrs were documented at the site 1000memories.com/egypt. The 1000memories site contained a digital collection of around 403 martyrs with information about their live. The entire Web site is unavailable now, and the Internet Archive is the only place where it was archived. Not only the 1000memories that has been disappeared, there are also many other repositories that contained videos, images, etc. that document the 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution disappeared. Examples are iamtahrir.com (archived version), which contained the artwork produced during the Egyptian Revolution, and 25Leaks.com (archived versions), which contained about 100s of important papers posted by people during the revolution. Both sites were created for collecting content related to the Egyptian Revolution.

An archived copy of 1000memories in Archive-It.
The Jan. 25 Egyptian Revolution is one of the most important events that has happened in recent history. Several books and initiatives have been published for documenting the 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution. These books cited many digital collections and other sites that were dedicated to document the Egyptian Revolution (e.g., 25Leaks.com). Unfortunately, the links to many of these Web sites are now broken and there is no way (without the archive) to know what they contained.

Luckily, 1000memories.com/egypt has multiple copies in the "Egypt Revolution and Politics" collection in Archive-It, a subscription service from the Internet Archive that allow institutions to develop, curate, and preserve collections of Web resources. I'm glad I found information of Basiony and many more martyrs archived!


Archiving Web pages is a method for ensuring these resources are available for posterity. My PhD research focused on exploring methods for summarizing and interacting with collections in Archive-It, and recording the events of the Egyptian Revolution spurred my initial interest in web archiving. My research necessarily focused on quantitative analysis, but this post has allowed me to revisit the humanity behind these web pages that would be lost without web archiving.

Sources:


--Yasmin

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