How You Can Help Preserve The Internet

The Internet is now a part of all our lives, is still growing, and will continue to grow. That being said, it is in a constant state of flux with websites coming and going. Within individual websites too, pages are often moved or deleted. What do you do if the page you want has disappeared?


The screen of a computer featuring the home page of Internet giant Google’s website

The answer is you consult a web archive. Back in 1996, the largest such archive was founded. Called appropriately the Internet Archive, at the moment it contains a staggering 397 billion pages, up from 391 billion last month.

You can contribute to the Internet Archive too by archiving your own site or individual pages from other sites you visit and think may not be there for the duration. This is a not infrequent occurrence with news sites. The way to do this is simply to run the page through the Wayback Machine on its homepage. After it was upgraded last year, this useful tool tells you immediately if a page is not already archived, and gives you the option of archiving it. Last year too it added a feature that allows you to fix broken links.

Although the Internet Archive is the largest, there are now many more; 2004 saw the start of the UK Web Archive, and in April last year, the British Library began archiving the entirety of the UK web domain. Other archiving projects include Trove, the Australian resource which contains among other things an impressive collection of historical newspapers. Some archives, Trove amongst them, allow you to “tag” catalogue entries for the benefit of other users.

[The above article was first published March 1, 2014.]

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