I know that many readers of cni-announce are aware of the pioneering work that Brewster Kahle has been doing at the Internet Archive to capture the historic evolution of the worldwide web over the past few years. With the announcement reproduced below the Internet Archive has taken the next step by providing a new access mechanism (the "wayback machine" -- hopefully some readers remember Sherman and Mr. Peabody from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show) for this archive, giving us a fascinating window into their archival collection. The uses of this for research and scholarship should be exciting and will undoubtedly lead to some surprising insights to inform our thinking about archiving in the digital world.

I know that Brewster would be grateful to hear about innovate uses to which this service is put, or ways in which it proves valuable in advancing scholarship.



Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI


INTERNET ARCHIVE LAUNCHES WAYBACK MACHINE

Free Service Enables Users to Access Archived Versions of Web Sites Dating
from 1996

SAN FRANCISCO (October 24, 2001) < The Internet Archive, a comprehensive
library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form,
today launched the Wayback Machine, a free service allowing people to
access and use archived versions of past web pages. For the first time,
all members of the public will be able to search and view the Internet
Archive's enormous collection of web sites, dating back to 1996 and
comprising over 10 billion web pages.

The service, which was unveiled tonight at a ceremony at the University of
California at Berkeley's Bancroft Library, is available at
web.archive.org. To use the Wayback Machine, visitors simply type in a URL
in the provided search box, select a date, and then begin surfing on an
archived version of the web.

"In 1996, we created the Internet Archive because we felt it was critical
to preserve a permanent record of this historically significant new medium
for the public," said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. "To date,
the Archive has catalogued over ten billion web pages that might otherwise
have been lost, giving us both a record of the origins and evolution of
the Internet, as well as snapshots of our society as a whole around the
turn of the century. For our fifth anniversary, we are opening up the
Archive to the public by launching the Wayback Machine, so that everyone
can travel back in time and view the Internet as it was in the past
future."

Since 1996, when the Internet Archive was founded in order to create a
permanent collection of digital material for the public, the Internet
Archive has been storing and recording web pages. Collaborating with
institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian
Institution, the Internet Archive's comprehensive library of the Web's
digital past comprises 100 terabytes of data and is growing at a rate of
10 terabytes per month, eclipsing the amount of data contained in every
library in the world including the Library of Congress, and making it the
largest known database in existence.

"By keeping an historical record of what Web sites looked like and how
they evolved over time, the Internet Archive is an invaluable resource for
journalism educators, academic researchers and people who just want to see
how the media and our culture marked important historical events," said
Paul Grabowicz, Director of the New Media Program and Assistant Dean at
Northgate UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. "Now, thanks to the
Archive's new Wayback Machine, everyone has the opportunity to revisit,
study and enjoy these important 'first drafts of history'."

About the Internet Archive The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 in
order to build a digital library and other cultural artifacts in digital
form, with the purpose of offering permanent and free access to
researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. The Archive
holds a collection of archived web pages, dating from 1996 and comprising
100 terabytes. Since 1999, the Archive has expanded its collections to
include: a September 11 television and online catalog; an Election 2000
online library; archived movies from 1903-1973; and other documents.
Located in San Francisco, the Archive is a 501(c)(3) public nonprofit
whose benefactors include Alexa Internet, AT&T Research, Compaq, the
Kahle/Austin Foundation, Prelinger Archives, Quantum DLT, Xerox PARC, the
Library of Congress, and the National Science Foundation.

# # #