Step 2 — Download your Facebook archive
Find out what you will download and how to download your Facebook archive.
Downloading your Facebook archive
Downloading your Facebook archive might take some time depending on how big your Facebook archive is and the amount of images or video content you have. So you may have to be patient.
There are several steps you will need to go through to download your Facebook archive. These steps are in place to prevent someone else from stealing your archive.
Only the page administrator or account owners can download a Facebook archive.
Instructions for downloading your Facebook archive
Here are Facebook's instructions on how to access and download your Facebook archive.
Accessing and downloading your Facebook information — Facebook help centre
Watch our video showing you how to download and donate your Facebook archive
Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2FHw23Q4SQ
Transcript
Kia ora and thank you for considering donating your Facebook archive to the National Library of New Zealand.
This video will show you the process of downloading your Facebook archive and donating it to the library.
Select the dropdown button at the top right and click Settings.
Select Your Facebook Information and then Download Your Information.
Here, you can make some selections about what to download. Please select HTML data
and high-quality.
You can also unselect any material you don’t want to donate, like private messages or payment information.
Once you’ve made any choices, select Create File.
It can take a few minutes to generate all the information. Facebook will email you when your archive is ready.
Navigate to Available Copies. When your archive is ready, you’ll be able to select
Download.
Your archive is downloaded as a zip file.
You can open the zip file and explore the archive.
You can delete any folders from inside the archive you may not want to donate.
Make sure to keep the index.html file because this helps display the other content included in the zip file.
Once you have decided what to donate, navigate to the National Library’s website to upload your archive.
We have lots of information about the project online – so please read through the terms and conditions. You’re nearly there!
The final step is filling out our Facebook archive donation form.
This includes putting in your details and confirming your eligibility to donate.
Select the access option that feels right for you and the privacy of others.
Add in what’s interesting about your archive!
Select Submit and continue your donation
Select Upload your Facebook archive to
Dropbox.
Your material will go to the Alexander Turnbull Library Dropbox where it will be checked by the Digital Archivists.
If your archive file is saved on your computer select Choose from Computer and navigate to your zip file to upload it.
Select Upload.
We’ll be in touch if there are any issues with your files.
Thank you for submitting your Facebook archive!
What's included when you download your Facebook archive?
When you download your Facebook archive you will get:
your profile information, for example, your contact information, interests, groups
wall posts and content that you and your friends have posted to your timeline
photos and videos that you have uploaded to your timeline
your friends list
notes you have created
places you have checked in to
events you have RSVP’d
your sent and received messages
any comments that you and your friends have made on your timeline posts, photos, and other profile content
Decide what you want to donate to the Library
Once you review the digital contents of your Facebook archive you may decide that you only want to donate some of that content. That is absolutely fine. We can accept donations of individual folders or the entire .zip archive file.
We recommend you:
have a look through the folders and files to get a sense of what’s stored in a Facebook archive
decide what content you might want to save as a copy for your own records
decide what content you may want to donate to the Library and under which access restrictions. It’s a good idea when considering this to take into account that your Facebook archive is likely to include content created by your friends, for example, comments on your profile or messages you might have received.
Please include the index.htm file
Your Facebook archive will download as a .zip file. Once you open that you will mostly likely see an index.htm file and a number of folders. We do request that if there is an index.htm file that you please include that with your donation.
Respecting your privacy — access and use by researchers
We understand that these archives are very likely to have personal and private information, information that many prospective donors may be wary of making available to the public anytime soon. To account for this, we have three access and use options for this project. In none of these options would your Facebook archives be available online without restriction.
We hope we’ve struck a balance between protecting donors’ privacy, and supporting researcher needs now, one hundred years from now, and beyond with these three options.
We want to ensure that we continue to offer donors a trusted and safe repository for their archives. We also want to honour our donors’ intention that by placing their archives with the Library, it is their desire to make these materials available to researchers now or in the future.
It has been this generosity of spirit and forbearance that allowed the Alexander Turnbull Library to first exist, and then to continue to thrive.
Access and use options
The three access and use options are:
available to researchers but restricted to onsite only access in the secure reading room, or
restricted and unavailable for researchers for twenty-five years; after that the content would be available for researchers onsite and only in the secure reading room, or
restricted and unavailable to researchers for one hundred years.
What happens if the Library doesn’t accept your donation
Library staff will review all donated content before accepting it into the Library’s collections. If for any reason we decide not to keep your content we will be in touch with you. We will either send you back the files, or delete the files on your behalf.
Need help?
Confused? Contact us atl-digital-donations@dia.govt.nz