Frequently Asked Questions

These steps will only work if the creator of the video has not updated, edited, or altered the original link to the YouTube video included in the archived website. 

1. Go to the Wester Libraries' Archive-IT page and look for the collection you are interested in and click on it. The collection titles are written in orange.
2. You will be rerouted to the collections page. There you can access the URL link, shown in orange. Click on the link that you are interested in. 
3. You will be redirected to the Wayback Machine webpage for that collection. The webpage will display a calendar with pale blue circles on some of the dates. Archived versions of the website are represented with blue circles over the dates it was updated on. A cluster of blue circles on a date means that there were multiple updates done on that particular date. 
4. For the most recent version of the website, go to the last calendar date with a blue circle and hover over it. This will show the time stamp of the update. Some dates will have multiple time stamps, reflecting that multiple updates took place on that date. Click on the most recent timestamp. 
5. The archived website will take a long time to load. Do not refresh while it is loading. Once the website has loaded, look through the archived website for the embedded YouTube video you are interested in. 
6. In the bottom, left-hand corner of the YouTube video, Click on "Watch on YouTube".
7. You will be redirected to a wayback.archive-it page. This page will give you some kind of error message. If this page doesn't appear and the page is blank, go to step 8. 
   • At the bottom of he page look to the last bullet point on the webpage that says, "You can also try searching for [website URL will be listed here] on the live web".
   • Click on the hyperlink under "live web".
   • This will take you to the YouTube video, as long as the original link has not been changed. 
8. If clicking "Watch on YouTube" takes you to a blank screen.
   • On the blank page, go to the URL bar. A portion of the URL will have the URL address for the YouTube video on the internet.
   • Highlight and copy the YouTube link. This will look similar to "www.youtube.com/watch...".
   • Open a new tab in your browser and paste the link into the URL bar. 
   • This will reroute to the specific video on YouTube. 
   • Once the page las loaded, the video should load and play automatically.
   • If not, you will need to click the play button on the video. 

Contact the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) team at archives.services@uwo.ca, if you have any questions.