PADICAT was born in 2005 following the trend of other national libraries on web archives creation.

There are many web archives running. The most famous began in 1996: the Swedish Kulturarw3; the Australian Pandora, and the most popular repository, Internet Archive. Fifteen years later,  there are fifty projects into implementation phases, although only a third of these are already consolidated.
 
The experiences analysis shows two basic models of collection policy with a widespread trend to hybrid model. The first is an integral model (majority, and characteristic of Scandinavian countries in the beginnings), that wants an automatic integration of the web from an important discernment (as a web pages domain, as a server place, etc.). The second model is the selective (assimilated for Australia, United Kingdom, or Japan, among other), directed to compile webs based a selective policy (some digital resources corresponding to different areas of knowledge for a specific geographical area). Both classical models have become -from beginning Danish experience, a global trend- to hybrid models, that are a complement for regular capture of a whole geographical domain, with selective actions, and expand these coverage to different social events (elections, sport competitions, cultural awards) or news that generating intense activity on the social networks (attacks, natural disasters, pandemics, episodes of financial crisis, debates).

Unfortunately, the number of repositories that allow open access to their collections is very limited, either to avoid conflicts with violation of intellectual property of captured resources without authorization, either because information retrieval interfaces  are not developed enough.

In most cases projects have been promoted by libraries and archives national agencies, public and private national entities. Managers of these agencies are grouped in International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) with the mission to compile and preserve information and Internet knowledge, give it access for future generations around the world, and promote global exchange and international relations.

In Spain, the Biblioteca de Catalunya promoted PADICAT web archive in 2005. In 2007, the Basque government and Eusko Jaurlaritzaren Informatika Elkartea (EJIE, Informatics Society of Basque government) created Ondarenet, the electronic archive of Basque heritage. Since 2009, the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) harvests regular captures of .es domain within the Internet Archive.

Although technical systems imperfections that use national policies of digital heritage preservation on the network, Internet archive is now a reality over the technologically developed world.

In June 2005 the Biblioteca de Catalunya started the preliminary phase, of planning, in which a projects analysis was performed about existing resources, agents envolved in production of web pages of Catalonia and legal issues that determine practices that want to do.

Based on parameters defined by the Biblioteca de Catalunya, on July 21, 2006 began to collect automatically websites likely to be part of the Digital Heritage of Catalonia, being the first the town councils of Berga and of Palafrugell, and the professional  associations of Aparelladors i Arquitectes Tècnics de Tarragona (Technical Architects of Tarragona) and graduates in Treball Social i Assistents Socials de Catalunya (Social Work and Social Assistance of Catalonia). September 11th, 2006, coinciding with celebration of National Day of Catalonia, PADICAT website was opened to the public, with thirty web pages stored.

The 2006-08 period represents production phase, project plan pilot, PADICAT operation phase: systematic capture of web pages of Catalonia.

The 2009-2011 period, BC should be in an optimum position, whereby this system -a pioneer in Spain and a benchmark in Europe- operates at full capacity. Furthermore, have reached cooperation agreements with 450 institutions of all kinds and has warranted online open access to all collection.

September 11th 2011 PADICAT has opened a new website version to access all deposited contents: 200.000 captures of 45.000 websites, which means about 300 million files and 10 Terabytes of data.

More about PADICAT evolution. All text are in Catalan:

Ciro Llueca; Daniel Cócera; Natalia Torres; Gerard Suades; Gerard de la Vega (2011). “El PADICAT: l’experiència catalana en l’arxiu d’Internet”. Ligall, 31. http://eprints.rclis.org/bitstream/10760/16246/1/llueca_lligall_31_2010_padicat.pdf

Ciro Llueca; Daniel Cócera (2008). "PADICAT: realitat i reptes de 3 anys d'arxiu web de Catalunya". 11es Jornades Catalanes d'Informació i Documentació. Barcelona: COBDC.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00013562/01/llueca_padicat_jornades_2008.pdf

Ciro Llueca (2006). "El projecte PADICAT (Patrimoni Digital de Catalunya) de la Biblioteca de Catalunya". 10es Jornades Catalanes d'Informació i Documentació. Barcelona: COBDC.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006434/01/llueca_padicat.pdf

Biblioteca de Catalunya (2005). Memòria del plantejament del projecte PADICAT (Patrimoni Digital de Catalunya). Barcelona: Biblioteca de Catalunya.
http://www.recercat.net/handle/2072/1757