​In the last newsletter, I talked about the erasure of Black history. While the United States government is on an all-out attack on the memory of the history of Black Americans–and, I should say anything that doesn’t fit into or agree with its Project 2025 whitewashed triumphalist view of history–there are sites dedicated to keeping and collecting the artifacts of the past, especially those that are not necessarily mainstream, as well as documenting the ongoing political and social disaster. Today, I am going to focus on the Internet Archive.

Universal Access to All Knowledge

​The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit digital library created in 1996. The ephemeral quality of the internet in its early days necessitated a way to archive its rapidly growing pages. since websites and blogs came into existence and disappeared quickly. As a successful early internet entrepreneur, Brewster Kahle recognized the need to preserve the burgeoning web, driven by his belief in "Universal Access to All Knowledge."

This vision has resulted in a collection exceeding 99 petabytes, encompassing texts, videos, audio, and more, a true gift to internet users (a petabyte is approximately one thousand terabytes or a million gigabytes). The acquisition of the 2000 films from the Prelinger Archives (curated by archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger; he donated most of the original 51,000 films in the collection to the Library of Congress) further enriches this modern-day Library of Alexandra.

Unfortunately, IA has not been without challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a program allowing free book borrowing led to the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit. Consequently, about 500,000 books, including 1,300 banned titles (like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale), are permanently out of circulation. However, these removed books remain accessible to patrons with print disabilities (they cannot read printed text).

More recently, in October 2024, a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack compromised user data and defaced the website, leading to a temporary shutdown. While the collections remained secure (and are duplicated), the incident raises concerns about the vulnerability of the library and the motivations of those who might seek to undermine universal access to knowledge.

Decades of Collections

Internet Archive has nearly three decades of internet history, and its archives contain digitized texts, images, and audio, which span decades (if not a couple of centuries). Here are just some of Internet Archive's projects:

• Political TV Ad Archive
• Building Libraries Together
• ​Open Library​
• ​Scanning Services​
• ​Software Archive​
• ​Archive-It​
• ​Offline Archive​
• ​BookServer​
• Open Content Alliance
• Open Education Resources
• ​Bookmobile​
• Open Community Networks

The Wayback Machine, IA's foundational project, allows users to explore archived versions of websites dating back to 1996. Internet Archive's robots regularly crawl the web, capturing the internet's evolution and enabling researchers to track website changes over time. IA provides a helpful 21-minute video on how to use this powerful tool.

Beyond the Wayback Machine, IA houses millions of texts and sound files, making it an excellent place to find out-of-print, rare, or difficult-to-locate materials, including historical newspapers for those without library access. For instance, while searching for material concerning historical erasure, I came across Archives, documentation, and institutions of social memory: essays from the Sawyer Seminar.

I have yet to read this book, but it is worth reviewing. This book renews automatically with use. Essays include:

• Elizabeth Yakel -- Remembering the future: appraisal of records and the role of archives in constructing social memory
• Judith E. Endelman -- Memories of colonization: commemoration, preservation, and erasure in an African archive

The Vintage Software Collection offers a nostalgic look at our technological past. Remind yourself of how far software tech has come or devolved, depending on your point of view. Please note that software usually operates system-specific, and most won't operate cross-platform.

The Children’s Library is a collection of fiction and nonfiction books that cover fairy tales, myths, drawing, and instruction. It’s a wonderful collection but please note that the books from the past may have drawings and/or text that may be considered racially or culturally insensitive in our present time. Use your discretion, and proceed with caution and an open-mind..

For something fun, CBS Radio Mystery Theatre archive revives the classic radio dramas of the pre-television era. Before podcasts, there were radio dramas and Mystery Theatre. For eight years, CBS tried to resuscitate radio drama, a popular type of performance most of the public listened to decades before the advent of television.

Lastly if you want to stay abreast of ongoing archive projects, read IA's own blog. Previously featured projects include a new digital collection on drug use and policy, digitization of stories about San Francisco’s immigrant communities, and the addition of Aruba's slavery documents being added to UNESCO's memory of the world register.

The Internet Archive provides a critical service for humanity. As you research its collections, remember that liking or agreeing with what you find is immaterial–some materials can be strongly offensive culturally or racially–but that you CAN find a particular document and reflect upon its cultural relevance is consequential. Historical erasure of both the good and the bad can have dangerous effects. What is happening currently in the United States is evidence of that.

Whether you are an educator, a homeschooling parent seeking diverse resources, or simply someone who enjoys exploring the vastness of the internet's history, IA is a contemporary argosy of freely accessible knowledge that deserves our support and protection against those who would restrict access to our shared history and information.

― Brewster Kahle, Digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive

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