As Scotland’s Thistles prepare for the Women’s Rugby World Cup, we’re building a record of how the tournament is seen, shared and remembered online — and we need your help to capture it.
20 August 2025Blog series UK Web Archive
Author Eilidh MacGlone, Web Archivist, National Library of Scotland
UK Web Archive Promotional Postcard on the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025
Muddy Thistles? Or Dropkick Thistles? I may not have a future in marketing…
I was listening in to a podcast clip about Team Scotland’s nickname to find out more about the upcoming event. Do the Thistles need a qualifier for their nickname? Not a question resolved by the Fed by Farmers podcast but it was a reminder that it’s not easy to guess what other people will find important or memorable.
The Cup will be a brief few weeks where crowds will gather to appreciate women’s rugby at its pinnacle, to see it played with the greatest skill. Players and their teams have trained, overcome injury and fundraised - now all that remains is playing the game. Our collection will capture only a small part, what people have written on the open web, but it helps to build the documentary history of Scotland.
Ian Scott, our curator of Sport, Leisure and Newspapers will be selecting items for this collection. I will be working to bring in copies of this material in good order and make them findable for future research.
History is made on the pitch, but sports writing by journalists observes the action for those of us who can’t be there. Players write for each other and the public in their social media, and one day, we can hope, write their own history. Fan sites and organisations web publications form one more part of the whole picture of how these weeks will be remembered.
Legal deposit for the web allows us to work to prepare for our future readers. But, the web, even when looking just at that part published from Scotland, is big. We can't be certain we will find every last thing written online that would be most appreciated in future… so, I would like to ask the reader a question.
Have you read something about the Rugby Women’s World Cup 2025 that said something important to you about it… that you won't forget?
If you can, please consider nominating your choices for archiving.
This blog post is part of the UK Web Archive series. The UK Web Archive was established in 2004 to collect, make accessible and preserve web resources of scholarly and cultural importance from the UK domain.
The collection is selective, built on nominations from subject specialists and other external experts. The British Library prioritises websites that:
You can access millions of collection items for free. Including books, newspapers, maps, sound recordings, photographs, patents and stamps.
