internetarchive

Today is the LAST DAY to support “For the Love of Books,” a partner initiative between us and Better World Books. ❤️📖🏛️📚

Since September 1, we have been working together to ensure literacy programs and book preservation create public and social good.

Donate today to the Internet Archive and join the efforts to preserve millions of books and ensure literacy for all: https://donate.archive.org/campaign/838534/donate

Would making bots identify themselves stop harmful scraping?

Not necessarily.

A bot can identify itself and still overwhelm a website. Target harmful behavior, not access, urge Lila Bailey & Tess Vartanian in Tech Policy Press.

Read ➡️ https://www.techpolicy.press/breaking-the-open-web-wont-stop-the-bad-bots/

Mastodon

Internet Archive Artist in Residence Christopher Burch draws on the digital library’s collections to create art that challenges the erasure of Black history. His exhibition, “Echoes of Absence and Mythos: The Un-Archivists of Shitocracy,” uses Afro Surrealism and Black folklore to bring suppressed narratives into view.

Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/14/celebrating-2026-internet-archive-artist-in-residence-christopher-burch/

Univeral access to all knowlege seemed within reach with 20th-century technologies like microfilm and microfiche. Today, the Internet Archive is digitizing these collections to help make that promise a reality.

In THE INTERNET ARCHIVE AT 30: A CONVERSATION WITH BREWSTER KAHLE, founder Brewster Kahle talks with Stephen Wyber of IFLA about bringing libraries’ mission into the digital age.

🎧 Listen & subscribe to the Future Knowledge #podcast ⤵️

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-internet-archive-at-30-a-conversation-with-brewster-kahle

#BrewsterKahle

The Wayback Machine risks becoming collateral damage in the fight against AI, writes Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle in The Atlantic.

Blocking the Internet Archive won’t stop AI companies from scraping the web. But it can undermine a vital resource for journalists, researchers, and anyone seeking information that has disappeared or changed.

Read the article free 👉 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065/?gift=1ga2TvL-DbuHDQIcYF7oR15xFrw9Q69up_lZIfXDr8Y

#NotAllBots #ProtectTheWayback

🎉 Welcome to the Public Domain, EDWARD STEICHEN’S FASHION FOR VOGUE (1930)

📸🖼️ Model Marion Morehouse wears a dress by Madeleine Vionnet in this photograph by Edward Steichen, one of the most influential fashion and modernist photographers of his era.

See Steichen's work in the October 27, 1930 issue of Vogue, now in the public domain ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/vogue-1930-1939/1930-1939/1930/Vogue%20v76n09%20%281930-10-27%29/page/42/

#PublicDomain #CopyrightFree

📽️ #OTD in 1928, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC premiered in France.

For this Public Domain Spotlight, revisit Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent masterpiece, featuring Renée Falconetti in one of cinema’s most celebrated performances.

Watch it at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/the-passion-of-joan-of-arc-1928-french

#PublicDomain #FilmHistory

👻 Spooky season continues at the Internet Archive!

Today’s treat: THE LAUREL & HARDY MURDER CASE, a 1930 comedy that sends Stan & Ollie to a mysterious mansion, where a murder mystery brings plenty of eerie goings-on. 🕯️🏚️

Then things go batty!🦇

More Spooky Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@iasocial/lists/22/spooky-season-2026

#PublicDomain #Halloween #SpookySeason #DigitalHistory

GEnie (the General Electric Network for Information Exchange) was founded in 1985 as a dial-up online service that connected users through email, forums, games, and downloads, building a devoted community while competing with CompuServe and AOL. 💿🌐

In 1996, new owners attempted to reinvent the magic 🧞 for the web era. But the service struggled to keep pace & went up in smoke by Y2K.

Take a trip through web history with #WaybackMachine ➡️ https://web.archive.org

#DialUpEra #InternetHistory

Archive.org is currently offline. We are working to restore service now.

Few government records say more about a democracy than the census. 📚 As debates over the 2030 count continue, historical records show how the U.S. government has counted people and how those practices have changed.

Through Democracy’s Library, the Internet Archive works to make government information freely available. Its U.S. Census collection includes digitized records from 1790 to 1930.

Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/12/the-people-counted-browse-raw-census-records-at-the-internet-archive/

#DemocracysLibrary #DigitalHistory

📅 Tomorrow.

We'll be celebrating the tools that let all of us participate in preserving, discovering, contributing to, and connecting around knowledge.

🏛️ Democracy's Library: Tools for Participation

🗓️ October 21.

Come be part of it.

🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/democracys-library-tools-for-participation/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Our annual celebration in San Francisco kicks off this Wednesday with a street fair! 🏛️

Meet the teams behind Internet Archive’s projects and allies, and see live demos of tools for saving web pages, digitizing books, preserving government records, and more.

Learn more & register 👇

https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/19/annual-celebration-2026-street-fair-to-showcase-internet-archives-projects-and-allies/

🎟️ Tickets are going fast!

Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive makes the case for web preservation in The Atlantic. 🌐

In The Internet Needs A Memory, Kahle explains why blocking the Wayback Machine won’t stop AI. It will only make the public record harder to preserve.

Read it 👉 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/blocking-internet-archive-will-not-stop-ai/689065/?gift=1ga2TvL-DbuHDQIcYF7oR15xFrw9Q69up_lZIfXDr8Y

#SpookySeason gets a sinister, shadowy visitor. 🦇 In F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922), Count Orlok’s long fingers and eerie silhouette make this landmark of horror cinema a study in unease. 🕯️

Watch it and more Spooky Stuff in the Internet Archive collections here ⤵️ https://archive.org/details/@iasocial/lists/22/spooky-season-2026

#PublicDomain #Halloween #DigitalHistory

Amateur radio history survives because people saved it. Much more has been lost in attics, basements, and forgotten files. 📻

Kay Savetz writes about recovering magazines, recordings, manuals, and materials for the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications. 📚

📚 "Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications" by Savetz is in #VANISHINGCULTURE.

📖 Download & read, FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/117

#DigitalMemory #InternetArchive #Bookstodon @dlarc #amateurradio #DLARC

The Internet Archive has an entire museum dedicated to the weirdest art of the early web. 🖼️

It's called GifCities.

Thousands of animated GIFs rescued from the first generation of the internet.

Glitter. Dancing. Cats. Strange little loops that somehow survived the decades. 💾

Go find your perfect retro GIF.

https://gifcities.org

#ToolsYouCanUse

🌉 Bay Area friends! Join us in San Francisco for the Internet Archive’s annual celebration, Democracy’s Library: Tools for Participation. There’s still time to join us in-person to celebrate the Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive tools we can use to preserve and share knowledge!

Can’t make it in person? Join us online via livestream!

📅 Wed, Oct 21 • 5–10 PM 📍 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/democracys-library-tools-for-participation/

🏛️ Who gets to build the internet we actually want?

On October 27, Internet Archive Canada hosts Open by Design: Tools for Participation in Vancouver, an evening about the systems and institutions shaping how we access and share information.

Hear from Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle and others working toward a more open internet.

📚 Read more & RSVP:

https://internetarchivecanada.org/2026/10/01/open-by-design-tools-for-participation-an-evening-with-internet-archive-canada/

The Internet Archive Hero Award is a work of art! 🏛️

Designer and educator Taekyeom Lee created a 3D model of the Internet Archive’s San Francisco building to honor those who preserve and share knowledge.

Join us October 21 for this year’s Hero Awards ceremony, livestreamed from our annual celebration!

Learn more about Lee and sign up for the event 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/14/building-the-hero-award/

When young people feel watched all the time, there’s less room to make mistakes and grow. 📹 Constant surveillance can turn kids into their own police, and make them police each other, too.

Helen Vogelsong-Donahue and Alexis Durante-Tierney, hosts of Born Digital, discuss this in MASS SURVEILLANCE AND THE LOSS OF FUN on the Future Knowledge #podcast.

🎧 Listen & subscribe: https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/mass-surveillance-and-the-loss-of-fun

📚 100 years ago today, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends opened up a book to their enchanted Hundred Acre Wood. 🍯 🧸🐝🐰🐷

Read the full extent of their stories from a century ago at the Internet Archive. Courtesy of the #publicdomain.👇

https://archive.org/details/winniepooh00milna/mode/2up

📅 One week.

For eight weeks, we've been showing you tools you can use to save, discover, contribute, and connect.

On October 21, we're bringing those ideas together.

🏛️ Democracy's Library: Tools for Participation

One celebration. A lot of ways to participate.

🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/democracys-library-tools-for-participation/

#ToolsYouCanUse

“Saving Democracy, One Public Record at a Time” is coming Friday! 🏛️

As part of ALA Round Tables, Merrilee Proffitt & Kelly Doyle Kim will discuss Democracy’s Library and ATLAS, which preserve and provide access to public records documenting how government works.

🆓 No registration required. ⏰ 10:45a–12p PT / 1:45–3p ET 📡▶️ https://youtube.com/@ALAGameRT 📡🎮 https://www.twitch.tv/ALAGameRT

Learn more 👉 https://games.ala.org/everything-is-on-fire-spectacular/

#DemocracysLibrary

👀 Watch history being preserved, live.

At the Internet Archive, government documents and other historical materials are being digitized in real time. 📜➡️💻

You can watch the process happen.

No time machine required. ⏳ Just microfiche. 🔍

Tune in and watch preservation happen. 📺

#ToolsYouCanUse

👻 Spooky season continues at the Internet Archive!

Today’s tricky treat: HÄXAN, the 1922 silent film about witchcraft, superstition and the persecution of those accused of practicing it. In this sequence, witches take flight through the night, followed by a gathering of dark rituals. This Swedish-financed Danish production was filmed in Denmark.

More Spooky Stuff here ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/@iasocial/lists/22/spooky-season-2026

#PublicDomain #Halloween #SpookySeason #DigitalHistory

📚 Ever noticed that a book's information is wrong online? You can help fix it. ✏️

Open Library is a collaborative catalog, and volunteers can improve book records, add missing information, correct metadata, and create records for books that aren't represented yet.

You can help make the catalog better.

https://openlibrary.org/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Public records help us understand how government works. Preserving them helps keep that record accessible. 🏛️

As part of ALA Round Tables, Merrilee Proffitt & Kelly Doyle Kim will discuss Democracy’s Library and ATLAS during “Saving Democracy, One Public Record at a Time.”

🆓 No registration required. ⏰ 10:45 AM–12 PM PT / 1:45–3p ET 📡▶️ https://youtube.com/@ALAGameRT 📡🎮 https://www.twitch.tv/ALAGameRT

Learn more 👉 https://games.ala.org/everything-is-on-fire-spectacular/

#ALA #DemocracysLibrary

Preserving government information takes sustained collaboration. 🤝 The Internet Archive’s new report from the Information Stewardship Forum shares what 120 participants learned, discussed, and began building together.

The report is now available, with a clear reminder that preservation and public access are stronger when we work in community. 📚

Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/06/who-is-government-information-for-information-stewardship-forum-2026-report/

#democracyslibrary

What if you could take a work of art, remix it, study it, share it, or build something new from it?

You can. Public-domain works belong to everyone. They're available to be: 🛠️ Reused 🔀 Remixed ❤️ Enjoyed 🧠 Reimagined

So go find something. Then make something new.

Free to (re)use.

https://blog.archive.org/2026/01/01/welcome-to-the-public-domain-in-2026/

#ToolsYouCanUse

❤️📖 Only a few weeks left to donate to “For the Love of Books.” 📖 ❤️

We are committed to preserving millions of books for everyone who seeks access to knowledge.

By donating to the Internet Archive by October 31, you support Better World Books and us in the fight to preserve literacy.

Pledge Support Today: https://donate.archive.org/campaign/838534/donate

Being watched all the time can make growing up feel like a performance. 📱

On the Future Knowledge #podcast, Alexis Durante-Tierney and Helen Vogelsong-Donahue discuss the freedom to experiment, change, and have something that's just your own. MASS SURVEILLANCE AND THE LOSS OF FUN considers what constant surveillance means for that freedom.

🎧 Listen & subscribe:

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/mass-surveillance-and-the-loss-of-fun

🧵

📖 Papiamento is the native language of Aruba, Bonaire, & Curaçao, but smaller languages can disappear online as English & Spanish dominate.

Peter Scholing shares how the National Library of Aruba & the Internet Archive are preserving Papiamento's written & audiovisual heritage.

📚 Read "The Wind-Blown Language: Papiamento" in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/113/

🛒 Purchase in print:

https://betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record-9798995425014/new

#VanishingCulture #InternetArchive

🏆 Celebrating the champions of local news preservation. The Internet Archive will honor the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors with its 2026 Hero Award for preserving local news online.

Through Today’s News for Tomorrow, these organizations help newsrooms preserve local reporting for future generations. The 2026 Hero Award will be presented October 21 in San Francisco.

Learn more 👉 blog.archive.org 🧵

#LocalNews #DigitalPreservation #InternetArchive

🏛️ Government information belongs to everyone.

Government documents help us understand how our society works, investigate the past, and participate in democracy. 📚

Democracy's Library brings government publications together so they're easier to discover and use.

Find something you want to understand better.

Start with the record. 👇

https://archive.org/details/democracys-library

#ToolsYouCanUse

🧅🌐 The Onion has been making the news absurd for decades.

Founded as a college newspaper in 1988, The Onion launched online in 1996, bringing its unmistakably ridiculous headlines, stories & snark to the web. 30 years later, its site is still going strong & satirical as ever.

Explore web history with the Wayback Machine ➡️ https://web.archive.org

#TheOnion #WebHistory

What do you get when Negativland brings its sound collage, sampling and cultural mischief to the Internet Archive? 🎛️📚

KQED’s Gabe Meline reviews a very Bay Area collision of experimental music, technology, fair use and the strange business of preserving culture.

Read the review: https://www.kqed.org/arts/13993971/review-negativland-internet-archive-san-francisco

It’s Spooky Season! 👻🦉

The

is serving frights all month. Today’s treat: a 1906 postcard design by R.L. Wells featuring a wide-eyed owl perched beneath the ominous words, “Tis the wise that visit us.” 🦉

Some visitors know when to come calling. 👀

More Spooky Stuff here ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/@iasocial/lists/22/spooky-season-2026

#PublicDomain #Halloween #SpookySeason #DigitalHistory

Every live show is different. That’s part of what makes preserving live performances so compelling. 🎸

Ryley Walker's Live Music Archive collection now includes 95 shows dating back to 2017, giving fans a record of how his music changes from night to night.

Check out Walker's collection ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/RyleyWalker

🧵

📻 To celebrate College Radio Day, tune in to more than a century of college radio history.

In 1906, students at Harvard formed what was described as the first college radio club. By the 1920s, students were building stations and broadcasting campus events.

Today, DLARC preserves that history through station records, posters, program guides, DJ manuals, scrapbooks, and more.

📚 Read the story:

https://blog.archive.org/2026/10/02/100-years-of-student-radio-history-in-the-dlarc-college-radio-collections/

#CollegeRadio #RadioHistory

📦 How does the Internet Archive safely pack & ship archival materials? Proper handling matters when you’re moving irreplaceable books & other library materials. Get a rare behind-the-scenes look at the once-a-year Physical Archive tour & see how it’s done.

📆 Tues, Oct 20 🕕 6–8 PM 📍 IN-PERSON: Richmond, CA 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

It’s Spooky Season! 👻🎶

All month long, we're sharing spooky treasures from our collections. 🕸️ We’re kicking things off with MYSTERIOUS MOSE, a 1930 cartoon featuring a proto-Betty Boop singing the eerie title song as a very strange visitor comes a calling.

Nearly a century later & Mose is still mysterious!

More Spooky Stuff here ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/@iasocial/lists/22/spooky-season-2026

#PublicDomain #Halloween #SpookySeason #DigitalHistory

The Internet Archive and Better World Books’ “For the Love of Books” campaign runs through October 31. 🏛️📚❤️

Your support helps the Internet Archive preserve books and make knowledge accessible, while supporting literacy.

Donate directly: https://donate.archive.org/campaign/838534/donate

Pledge through Better World Books: https://www.betterworldbooks.com/go/Internet_Archive

The Wayback Machine lets you travel through more than a trillion saved web pages. 🏛️

‣ Find an old website. ‣ See how a familiar site changed. ‣ Recover something that's disappeared. ‣ Check what a page looked like years ago.

Your old books could have another life—not just on your shelf, but in the library.

The web has a history. Go explore it.

http://web.archive.org/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Here's a small thing you can do for the future: 🌐 Find a webpage you care about. 💾 Save it. ✔️ That's it. One saved page becomes part of the web's shared memory.

Try it today 👉 http://web.archive.org/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Restricting access to knowledge can have consequences far beyond a single blocked user. 🔒

Publisher Charles Watkinson of University of Michigan Press warns that locking up content can damage the open ecosystem and limit collaboration in knowledge production.

On the Future Knowledge #podcast, Watkinson joins Lisa Petrides and Chris Bourg for OPEN FOR WHOM? 📚

🎧 Listen & subscribe ⤵️

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/open-for-whom

What's on your bookshelf that the Internet Archive doesn't have?

There's an app for that.

Scan a book's barcode or ISBN to see whether the Internet Archive needs it for preservation and digitization.

Your old books could have another life—not just on your shelf, but in the library.

Scan your shelves. Save a book.

https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-android/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Ryley Walker loves the Internet Archive.

The singer-songwriter says the Live Music Archive is a “treasure trove that never really stops,” and he welcomes fans and tapers documenting his live shows so people everywhere can hear how his music changes from night to night.

Learn Walker’s thoughts on preserving live music 👇 https://blog.archive.org/2026/09/29/every-night-is-different-ryley-walker-on-preserving-live-music/

🎨 “DIGITAL GHOSTS - ACCESS TO WEB ARCHIVES THROUGH DATA AND CREATIVITY” began as an experiment in making the internet’s disappearing traces visible.

Led by Dr. Andrea Kocsis of The University of Edinburgh with artist Dorsey Kaufmann, the project brought archivists, librarians & students together to use computational & creative visualization to engage the public with web archives.

See that work come to life in this CARTA webinar.

📅 Weds. Oct. 7 🕗 8 AM PT 🎟️ https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Wvhj-v7WQS2IWn3RQbCTtg#/registration

You can help build the library. 🏛️

Have digital materials you’re allowed to share? Upload them to the Internet Archive so other people can discover and use them.

📷 A photograph. 🎙️ A recording. 📄 A document. 💾 A piece of digital history.

What you have might be useful to someone else, and worth preserving for the future.

Upload your first item 👇

https://archive.org/upload

#ToolsYouCanUse

🌁 San Francisco gets tangled in murder, deception, and a missing statuette in this LibriVox recording of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 public domain classic, THE MALTESE FALCON. 🕵️‍♂️

📚 It’s one of tens of thousands of free public domain audiobooks in the LibriVox Audio Collection on the Internet Archive. From mysteries and adventures to poetry, history, science fiction, and children’s classics, there’s always something new to hear. 🎧

Follow the trail 👇

https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio

#Bookstodon

Who gets to own what we create?

On Educating to Be Human, host Lisa Petrides talks with Internet Archive Senior Policy Counsel Lila Bailey about the tension between knowledge as a shared cultural commons & knowledge controlled through copyright, licensing, and corporate platforms.

They also examine what public knowledge infrastructure could look like, supported by libraries, schools, and civic institutions.

🎧 Listen to WHO OWNS KNOWLEDGE with Lila Bailey:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/who-owns-knowledge-with-lila-bailey/id1760809665?i=1000791094542

🤘🌐 “Everybody! Everybody!” Homestar Runner has barely changed!

Launched in 2000, the beloved web cartoon site has kept its decidedly retro look, so today’s homepage could easily be mistaken for a page from the Flash era. Cartoons, games, music & Strong Bad emails are all still part of the mix.

Explore web history with the Wayback Machine ➡️ https://web.archive.org

#InternetHistory #WebAnimation #Flash

🗂️ Ever seen those tiny images of old documents on sheets of film? That’s microfiche! So, how do those go from film to the Internet Archive? See how these records are digitized at the Physical Archive tour!

It's a once-a-year opportunity to witness preservation processes up close.

📆 Tues, Oct 20 🕕 6–8 PM 📍 IN-PERSON: Richmond, CA 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

The Internet Archive building is 103 years old, but it still looks like it did in 1923. 🏛️ Built as the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, the Internet Archive purchased it in 2009. Same building, totally different mission. 📚

The Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon featured it in its “Then and Now” series. See it and more historic San Francisco photos ⤵️

https://richmondsunsetnews.com/?s=then+and+now

Open access to knowledge is never an end in itself. It's about equalizing access, advancing discovery, and treating knowledge as a public good. 📚

On the Future Knowledge #podcast, Lisa Petrides of ISKME shares this perspective in conversation with Chris Bourg of MIT Libraries and Charles Watkinson of University of Michigan Press about OPEN FOR WHOM?

🎧 Listen & subscribe ⤵️

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/open-for-whom

Welcome to the Public Domain AUTUMN (1930)!

This 3rd entry in the seasonal Silly Symphonies 🎶 cycle was released in February, but the #AutumnEquinox is the time to enjoy it.

👀 Watch the full fall 🍁 short ⤵️

https://archive.org/details/autumn_1930

#FallEquinox #SeptemberEquinox #Disney #Animation #ClassicCartoons #VintageAnimation

Care work is often invisible and undervalued, leaving an important part of our history at risk of disappearing. Amanda Gray Rendón examines how social media can preserve caregiving work and the communities that support it. 🏛️

📚 Read 'Archiving Community Care Work Online' in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive 📖 Download & read, FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/136/

#Bookstodon #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive

Government records are part of the public record, but digital information can be difficult to preserve, find, and use.

The Internet Archive has received an IMLS grant to develop ATLAS, a national program supporting preservation and access to local and state government information. The project will train 100 government and partner institutions and build new resources for the field.

Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/09/10/atlasimls/

“Digital ghosts” are traces of online life that evolve, disappear or behave unpredictably. How can we make these fleeting traces visible?

The upcoming webinar, CARTA Presents: “DIGITAL GHOSTS - ACCESS TO WEB ARCHIVES THROUGH DATA AND CREATIVITY,” explores how visual design can reveal patterns of digital disappearance & question how cultural memory is shaped by what gets saved and what is lost.

Weds, Oct. 7; 8 AM PT/11 AM ET

✍️ Sign up: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Wvhj-v7WQS2IWn3RQbCTtg#/registration

📚 What happens when a library doesn’t just preserve knowledge, but gives people the tools to use it, build with it & participate in creating what comes next?

Find out at Democracy’s Library: Tools for Participation, an IN-PERSON Internet Archive event. It's our annual extravaganza with food trucks, entertainment, a presentation, and dancing in the streets.

📅 Wed, Oct 21 • 5–10 PM 📍 Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

A livestream event is available, too!

📖 There’s still time to support the Internet Archive and Better World Books “For the Love of Books” campaign! 📖

Join us through October 31, 2026, by donating to the Internet Archive to support literacy and preservation for generations to come.

Donate Today: https://donate.archive.org/campaign/838534/donate

Local news preservation takes ongoing collaboration. 📰

The Internet Archive’s National Summit on Local News Preservation brought journalists, librarians, archivists, and researchers together to develop recommendations and next steps for preserving local news. The resulting report is a starting point for continued work.

Learn more 👉 https://blog.archive.org/2026/09/01/localnewsreport/ 🧵

🏛️ Once a year, the Physical Archive opens its doors for a rare behind-the-scenes tour! On Oct. 20, see preserved collections up close, visit demo stations & join digital librarian Brewster Kahle for insightful tours inside the facility.

Don't miss out.

📆 Tues, Oct 20 🕕 6–8 PM 📍 Richmond, CA 🎟️ & Details ➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

@funcheapsf

JUST ADDED: Tonight’s Negativland concert at the Internet Archive is sold out, but you can still join us online!

The livestream begins at 6:30pm PT and will only be available during the show. At the band’s request, there will be no replay.

Watch live ➡️ https://youtube.com/live/qiQ39fMN-vU

Government information was meant to be distributed, & libraries play a key role in making the public record available to everyone.

On the Future Knowledge #podcast, Merrilee Proffitt of Democracy’s Library at the Internet Archive, James Jacobs of Stanford University, & Christopher Marcum of the Federation of American Scientists discuss why preserving government information matters in the digital age.

🎧 Listen & subscribe ⬇️

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-fight-for-the-public-record

#democracyslibrary

GIFs became a defining part of the early web, including the ubiquitous “under construction” signs that marked unfinished pages. JD Shadel looks at what these fleeting images can teach us about preserving digital culture before it disappears.

📚 Read 'What Early Internet Era GIFs Show Us About Preserving Digital Culture' in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive 📖 Download & read, FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/159/

#Bookstodon #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive

🌐 The internet doesn’t remember everything. Websites disappear, links decay & digital traces change over time.

CARTA Presents: “DIGITAL GHOSTS - ACCESS TO WEB ARCHIVES THROUGH DATA AND CREATIVITY” looks at how creative visualization can make online decay visible, asking what digital disappearance means for cultural memory.

Dr. Andrea Kocsis of The University of Edinburgh leads this webinar, developed with multimedia artist Dorsey Kaufmann.

📅 Weds Oct 7 🕗 8 AM PT 🎟️ https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Wvhj-v7WQS2IWn3RQbCTtg#/registration

“Fix the Wayback Machine!”

We’ve heard you. The Wayback Machine has been dealing with waves of high-volume automated traffic. Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, explains what’s happening and what we’re doing about it.

➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/09/15/an-update-on-wayback-machine-access/

🚨🔥 Tickets are close to selling out! If you want to experience Negativland live in San Francisco, now’s the time to get yours. This rare appearance brings Over The Edge: Significantly Less Deceptive to the Internet Archive for one unforgettable night.

📅 Wed, Sept 16, 6 PM 📍 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/negativland-live-at-internet-archive/

🌐 It's our annual event! Celebrate the Wayback Machine & other Internet Archive tools that help preserve, explore, share & build knowledge together.

From saving materials to exploring government records, researching history & building tools with collections & APIs, these tools turn a shared library into a place where everyone can participate.

Join us IN PERSON for Democracy's Library: Tools for Participation

📅 Wed, Oct 21 • 5–10 PM 📍 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

You can listen to thousands of hours of Negativland’s Over The Edge on the Internet Archive. But you can’t experience this LIVE performance from home.

In 2015, we preserved 4,000+ hours of the legendary radio program. Now see Negativland IN PERSON.

📅 Wed, Sept 16, 6 PM 📍 IN-PERSON @ Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/negativland-live-at-internet-archive/

Public data needs more than preservation. It needs to remain usable. 🏛️

In THE FIGHT FOR THE PUBLIC RECORD, Christopher Marcum of the Federation of American Scientists joins Merrilee Proffitt of Democracy’s Library at the Internet Archive & James Jacobs of Stanford University for a Future Knowledge #podcast conversation about how civic society can preserve threatened government data & make it useful to the public.

🎧 Listen & subscribe:

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/the-fight-for-the-public-record

🌐 Web archives are never complete. What happens when the gaps, biases & disappearances become part of the story?

CARTA Presents: “DIGITAL GHOSTS - ACCESS TO WEB ARCHIVES THROUGH DATA AND CREATIVITY” is a webinar featuring Dr. Andrea Kocsis of The University of Edinburgh.

On Oct. 7 at 8 AM PT, she’ll share five interactive works that make the web’s temporality & fragility visible, from link decay to disappearing online music cultures.

✍️ Register today: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Wvhj-v7WQS2IWn3RQbCTtg#/registration

Much of BET’s digital journalism is no longer available on the live web.

Internet Archive has preserved more than 199,000 BET articles over the years. They can now be accessed through the Wayback Machine & a new pilot explorer: https://wayback-labs.sf.archive.org/bet-explorer/

Knitting machine punch cards are a living form of computing history. 🧶💾

In “Punch Card Knitting,” Nichole Misako Nomura explores how these physical forms of binary code are still used today, and the challenges of preserving them for future use.

📚 Read “Punch Card Knitting” in VANISHING CULTURE from the Internet Archive. 📖 Download FREE: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/144/ 🧵

🔥 Tickets are going fast for this rare Negativland live performance in San Francisco! Don’t miss Over The Edge: Significantly Less Deceptive, a one-of-a-kind evening of sound collage, humor & experimentation at the Internet Archive.

📅 Wed, Sept 16, 6 PM 📍 IN-PERSON @ Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/negativland-live-at-internet-archive/

🧩 A math puzzle. 🚗 A solar car. 🌪️ Natural-disaster insurance. ⚡ Electricity oversupply in Kyushu.

These were four very different questions put to ClimateGPT 4.3, a specialized climate model, during a recent Internet Archive tour. The results were a mix of useful answers, wrong turns & outright refusals.

📖 Learn more about the experiment ➡️ https://erasmus.ai/?p=875

We’ve teamed up with Better World Books for a brand new initiative, “For the Love of Books.”

Join us now through October 31, 2026, to pledge your support to preserve millions of books while promoting reading and environmental sustainability. 📚❤️

Make your donation here: https://donate.archive.org/campaign/838534/donate

If you see something, save something.

Web pages disappear every day. 🕳️ They change, move, get deleted—or simply get forgotten.

Save Page Now lets you preserve a webpage that's important to you before it changes or disappears.

See something worth keeping?

Save it today. ➡️ https://web.archive.org/save/

#ToolsYouCanUse

Negativland LIVE at Internet Archive!

For more than 40 years, Negativland has turned found sound, radio & mass media into provocative art. Over The Edge: Significantly Less Deceptive brings that to life in San Francisco!

📅 Wed, Sept 16, 6 PM 📍 IN-PERSON, 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/negativland-live-at-internet-archive/

#sfevents

For many artists, a website is more than a portfolio. It’s a record of a life’s work, built over decades, & something they want future generations to find.

CARTA is helping preserve more than 50 artists’ websites, many by Latinx artists, so their work can survive technical failures, lost hosting & more.

Learn more on our blog👇

https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/25/artistswebsites/

🏛️ Democracy invites participation; democracies require it.

What can libraries do to make that participation possible? At our Democracy’s Library: Tools for Participation event, we’ll explore how preserving knowledge, opening access & giving people tools to learn, research & contribute can strengthen our ability to participate in civic life.

Join us IN PERSON! 📅 Wed, Oct 21 • 5–10 PM 📍 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

Can’t attend? A livestream event is available, too!

🧩 Ever play THE IMPOSSIBLE QUIZ? This maddening Flash game is a snapshot of the weird, inventive web culture that flourished in the 2000s. Its preservation shows why saving Flash matters: creations that once defined everyday web culture can otherwise disappear. 🖥️

🎮 Thanks to Flash preservation, you can play it on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/impossible-quiz-deluxe-newgrounds

#Flash #Gaming #VanishingCulture

What we read today was shaped by economic forces that transformed publishing decades ago. 📚

In BIG FICTION on the Future Knowledge #podcast, author & Emory professor Dan Sinykin explains how consolidation, new distribution systems & chain bookstores created the conditions for a new publishing model, in conversation with humanities scholar Ted Underwood.

🎧 Listen & subscribe:

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/big-fiction

Flash was once the playground of the web: games, animations & experiments made by anyone with an idea. 💻 Preserving those creations helps recover a lost chapter of culture.

In “Why Preserve Flash?”, Internet Archive archivist Jason Scott explores why Flash matters & why its preservation is vital.

📖 Download & read, FREE from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026/page/141/ 🧵

For more than 40 years, Negativland has challenged conventions around media, copyright & culture.

Now, for a rare live appearance, they bring Over The Edge: Significantly Less Deceptive to the Internet Archive in San Francisco! Seating is limited!

📅 Wed, Sept 16, 6 PM 📍 IN-PERSON @ Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave, SF 🎟️ https://blog.archive.org/event/negativland-live-at-internet-archive/

#sfevents

🏛️ Before the Internet, computer clubs brought people together to learn, trade software, share ideas & explore the rapidly changing world of personal computing. 💾

A surviving binder of 50 Atari newsletters from August 1987 offers a remarkable time capsule of that world. These newsletters & many more for Atari, Apple II, Texas Instruments computers & other platforms are available in Internet Archive collections. 📚

More on. our blog: https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/27/a-computer-history-time-capsule/

#RetroComputing

🎉 Welcome to the Public Domain, SIMULTANEOUS COUNTER-COMPOSITION (1930) 🎨🇳🇱

🖼️ Theo van Doesburg’s geometric abstraction is associated with De Stijl, the influential movement he helped shape.

See it ➡️ https://archive.org/details/simultaneous-counter-composition-1930 🧵

The Internet Archive isn't just a place to find things.

You can: 🔖 Save something before it disappears. 🔎 Discover something you didn't know existed. ✍️ Improve or contribute to a collection. 🤝 Connect with people doing the work of preservation.

Over the next eight weeks, we'll show you how.

SAVE. DISCOVER. CONTRIBUTE. CONNECT.

➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

#ToolsYouCanUse

What does it mean to participate in a library?

🔖 You could save a webpage before it disappears. 📚 Improve a book record. 🔎 Discover a government document. 📣 Share a collection. 🏛️ Help preserve your community’s digital history.

The Internet Archive has tools to do all this & more.

Over the next 8 weeks, we’ll show you how.

SAVE → DISCOVER → CONTRIBUTE → CONNECT

➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/17/registration-is-now-open-for-internet-archives-annual-celebration/

#ToolsYouCanUse

🏛️ Government websites can change or disappear overnight, taking public records with them. 🕳️ That’s why libraries have collaborated on the End of Term Web Archive since 2004, preserving U.S. government websites at every presidential transition.

📚 The latest crawl captured petabytes of material, including 2 million videos.

The End of Term Web Archive is Democracy’s Library in action.

https://blog.archive.org/2026/08/24/archiving-democracy-how-the-u-s-end-of-term-web-archive-preserves-government-history/