This year the Internet Archive turns 25. It’s best known for its pioneering role in archiving the internet through the Wayback Machine, which a

Parts of the web are disappearing every day. Here’s how to save Internet history

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2021-12-06 21:30:09

This year the Internet Archive turns 25. It’s best known for its pioneering role in archiving the internet through the Wayback Machine, which allows users to see how websites looked in the past.

Increasingly, much of daily life is conducted online. School, work, communication with friends and family, as well as news and images, are accessed through a variety of websites. Information that once was printed, physically mailed or kept in photo albums and notebooks may now be available only online. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed even more interactions to the web.

You may not realize portions of the internet are constantly disappearing. As librarians and archivists, we strengthen collective memory by preserving materials that document the cultural heritage of society, including on the web. You can help us save the Internet, too, as a citizen archivist.

People and organizations remove content from the web for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s a result of changing Internet culture, such as the recent shutdown of Yahoo Answers.