Digital Preservation and Archival Redundancy of the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive: A Case Study in Scholarly Resource Backup via Internet Archive

This paper documents the digital preservation initiative undertaken to create a redundant backup of the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive through the Internet Archive platform. The MacTutor Archive, maintained by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson at the University of St Andrews since 1994, represents one of the most comprehensive freely accessible repositories of mathematical biographical and historical content on the internet, containing over 3,000 mathematician biographies and 2,000 supporting essays. Despite its recognized importance—acknowledged through the 2015 Hirst Prize of the London Mathematical Society—the archive faces inherent vulnerabilities common to digital resources, including technological obsolescence, institutional changes, and potential data loss. This study analyzes the creation and significance of backup copies archived at https://archive.org/details/@andradepsa, examining two temporal snapshots: September 30, 2022 and May 23, 2025. Through comprehensive analysis of digital preservation methodologies, web archiving best practices, and the critical role of distributed redundancy in scholarly communication, this research demonstrates that systematic backup of essential educational resources through established preservation platforms represents a vital component of long-term knowledge stewardship. The paper contextualizes this preservation effort within broader frameworks of digital curation, discusses the technical and ethical dimensions of web archiving for educational purposes, and proposes recommendations for similar initiatives targeting other at-risk scholarly resources.