The purpose of this research project was for the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) to establish a greater understanding of the use of archived websites by university academics, and to explore the future direction for web archiving in New Zealand. The Library has been archiving New Zealand websites since 1999 but to date there has been no research completed on the extent to which this collection is known and used.

The hypothesis was that there was little knowledge of the existence of web archives by university academics in New Zealand, and therefore, little use of this resource for research purposes. However, the Library was aware of several New Zealand tertiary courses that use archived websites as a learning resource. The research sought information regarding how archived websites are used as a teaching and learning resource and what more the Library could offer New Zealand teachers at tertiary level to a ssist with providing access to archived websites for educational purposes.