Preserving the Internet

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Of course, scientists aren't the only ones with data worth protecting. In San Francisco, the nonprofit Internet Archive is building an internet library -- a kind of Library of Alexandria for the 21st century. The organization's website states that, 'If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.' In collaboration with institutions such as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, the Internet Archive seeks to trace the evolution of the internet, track language changes, revive dead links, establish international internet centers, and exercise our 'right to remember.' A search feature on the site called the Wayback Machine allows users to browse through 85 billion web pages to find pages from as early as 1996, including those that no longer exist. Simply type in the URL of the site you're looking for and a list, sorted by year, pops up with links to each former incarnation.

Go there >> The Lost Art of the Letter

Go there, too >> The Internet Archive

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• The Fading Memory of the State
• Fighting to Protect Copyright 'Orphans'

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• The Free and the Unfree
• Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?
• For Your Eyes Only: Anti-censorship Sites

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