Hopefully you’ve heard of the Internet Archive and the Way Back Machine before, if not the organization is “a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.” The Way Back Machine lets you check out a previous version of an existing website or even one that is no longer around. In other words, archive.org is an important website in the preservation of internet content. As you can imagine, the amount of data collected by the non-profit organization must be insanely huge.
The Internet Archive posted an interesting post on their blog earlier today, a blog post that started off lamenting about the loss of libraries like the famed Library of Alexandria. The post went on to state that a library like theirs is susceptible to loss through earthquakes, institutional failure, and legal regimes — the latter the basis of the rest of the blog post.
On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change. It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change.
The goals of the Internet Archive are simple: keeping our cultural materials safe, private, and perpetually accessible while fighting to protect our readers’ privacy in the digital world. As part of this goal, the non-profit library has decided that it is time to build another data center and have announced that they are building the Internet Archive of Canada to back up existing and future records they’ve already gathered over previous years.
So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, “lots of copies keep stuff safe.” This project will cost millions. So this is the one time of the year I will ask you: please make a tax-deductible donation to help make sure the Internet Archive lasts forever.
The Internet Archive feels that this move is necessary in order to support their key mission: “to give everyone access to all knowledge, forever. For free.” We try to stay non-political here at Techaeris, but there is no telling what will transpire over the next four years with regards to net neutrality under a Trump presidency.
If you wish to donate to assist with the building of the Internet Archive of Canada or to support their rising server and other costs of maintaining their archives, the Wayback Machine, Open Library, and other services, you can donate directly to the Internet Archive.
What do you think about the organization’s decision to start building the Internet Archive of Canada? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”http://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-accessible-and-private/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Internet Archive[/button]
