Katolog > Computers > Internet > History > Archives

Collections preserving old material from the Internet. The archive should contain material which cannot be found on the World Wide Web through simple search engine and browser access, for example former websites which are no longer live. This does not include websites which have been 'rescued' by moving them to another WWW location.

Links:

The Internet Archive Nonprofit organisation established to preserve Web sites by taking regular "snapshots". www.archive.org

Ghost Sites Long running online "museum" provides screenshots of defunct sites. www.disobey.com/ghostsites/index.shtml

Textfiles Contains information gathered from BBS's in the early days of the Internet. www.textfiles.com

NoveltyNet A site where people can submit orphaned content to be archived and kept available. www.noveltynet.org

DevArchives Contains archives of FAQs, mailing lists, and newsgroups all related to developer/programming/IT. Free. www.devarchives.com

The Register: Archive.org Suffers Fahrenheit 911 Memory Loss Opinion piece by Ashlee Vance about how archive.org doesn't permanently save material the way most people believe it does. www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/09/archive_yeahright_org

The Register: Britain's Web Presence to be Saved Announcement of the creation of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC). www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/24/web_archive_british

The Register: The Web as Historical Record Essay by Peter Abrahams pointing out "one of the weaknesses of most search engines and the Web itself: you cannot sort by date." www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/04/web_historical_record

The Register: Google, the Only Archive We'll Ever Need? Opinion piece by Andrew Orlowski. Points out that Google can't always index, retrieve and/or sort everything in useful ways, but its supporters are overlooking these major drawbacks to using it as an archive. www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/15/google_the_only_archive_well

First Monday: Internet Time and the Reliability of Search Engines Journal article by Paul Wouters, Iina Hellsten, and Loet Leydesdorff. Examines the consequences and implications of internet search engines continuously reconstructing the past by updating their indices. www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/wouters

Searchenginewatch.com - It's Tough to Get a Good Date with a Search Engine Article by Gary Price and Genie Tyburski. Explores the question of "what is a date on the web?" and notes that a searcher may be misled by the results of searches restricted by date. searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2160061

Google Groups Searchable archive of more than 700 million Usenet postings from a period of more than 20 years. groups-beta.google.com