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Signage for Hachette Book Group is displayed at BookExpo America in New York.

When You Buy a Book, You Can Loan It to Anyone. This Judge Says Libraries Can’t. Why Not?

The lawsuit against Controlled Digital Lending is about giving corporations—rather than readers, buyers, borrowers, or authors—control over content.
by Michelle M. Wu via The Nation on April 20, 2023
An old black and white photo at a dinner event

The History of American Newspapers is More Searchable Than Ever

A stroll through the archives of Editor & Publisher shows an industry with moments of glory and shame — and evidence that not all of today's problems are new.
by Joshua Benton via Nieman Lab on February 2, 2021

The Internet’s Keepers?

Wayback Machine Director Mark Graham outlines the scale of everyone's favorite archive.
by Nathan Matisse via Ars Technica on October 7, 2018
Skyscraper construction workers at lunch photo, but sitting atop a web search bar.

Social Media Is Not What Killed the Web

Better browsers made things worse.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on March 25, 2024
A portion of the author’s music collection; bootleg cassette tapes and CDs. Photo by Maya Walker.

The Pirate Preservationists

When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law.
by Jesse Walker via Reason on September 10, 2023
Looney Tunes "That's all Folks" on a TV screen.

HBO Max’s Great Looney Tunes Purge

Hundreds of classic cartoons vanished without warning. How can you raise your kids on favorites you can’t access anymore?
by Sam Thielman via Slate on January 11, 2023
Advertisement for a gold dredging machine from a 1920's magazine.

The Huckster Ads of Early “Popular Mechanics”

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.
by Clive Thompson via Medium on August 6, 2022
Visitors browse newspaper front pages from the day after the 9/11 terror attacks at the Newseum in Washington, D,C., in 2016. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

When History Is Lost in the Ether

Digital archiving is shoddy and incomplete, and it will hamper the ability of future generations to understand the current era.
by Christian Schneider via The Dispatch on April 6, 2022

In the Dead Archives

The comment section of a Grateful Dead concert archive offers a sometimes-dark glimpse into a dedicated fan community.
by Max Abelson via n+1 on August 20, 2021
Picture of a computer.

The Internet Is Rotting

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
by Jonathan Zittrain via The Atlantic on June 30, 2021
A graphic featuring art and archival storage.

NFTs and AI Are Unsettling the Very Concept of History

Non-fungible tokens and artificial intelligence make tracing the origins of a digital object more fragile. What are the world’s archivists to do?
by Rick Prelinger via Wired on April 20, 2021
Photo of the 1870 U.S. Census, with lines highlighted in orange, yellow, and green

The Strange Case of Booker T. Washington's Birthday

If Booker T. Washington never knew when he was born, how are we so sure about it now?
by Bill Black via Contingent on April 5, 2021
collage of disappeared webpages

The Internet Isn't Forever

When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.
by Maria Bustillos via Columbia Journalism Review on February 20, 2018
Pixelated image of ancient ruins with columns

Raiders of the Lost Web

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.
by Adrienne LaFrance via The Atlantic on October 14, 2015
Server for the Internet Archive.

Can the Internet be Archived?

The Web dwells in a never-ending present. The Wayback Machine aims to preserve its past.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on January 26, 2015
At the New York Public Library, 15 December 2004.

The Birth of Our System for Describing Web Content

Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable.
by Monica Westin via Aeon on February 22, 2024
The cover of "The Deadline" by Jill Lepore.

The Hold of the Dead Over the Living

A conversation with Jill Lepore about the past decade — “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.”
by Jill Lepore, Julien Crockett via Los Angeles Review of Books on January 2, 2024
Old computer with its mouse over the AOL logo.

America Online: A Cautionary Tale

On the rise and fall of the quintessential ’90s online service provider—and a warning about today’s social-media giants.
by Joanne McNeil via The Nation on December 15, 2022
Bottles of WD-40 on a shelf

How WD-40 Became Rust’s Worst Enemy

The history of WD-40, a chemical substance with an unusual origin story and a rust-fighting ability that has become a standby of workbenches the world over.
by David Buck via Tedium on November 26, 2021
Label of 16″ transcription disc of the March 13, rehearsal of “Who Knows? Bill Cook Collection, Library of Congress.

Who Knows? Radio and the Paranormal

A radio drama series from 1941 based on Dr. Hereward Carrington's case records of psychic phenomena.
by Matthew Barton via Now See Hear! on October 27, 2021
A boy surfs on a computer keyboard surrounded by details from earlier internet eras.

You Probably Don’t Remember the Internet

How do we memorialize life online when it’s constantly disappearing?
by Kaitlyn Tiffany via The Atlantic on March 22, 2021
A clue and black clay figuring with a Sony Watchman attached as its "head."

Please, My Digital Archive. It’s Very Sick.

Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history.
by Tanner Howard via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 4, 2019
Internet Archive servers.

Data Overload

How will the historians of the future manage the massive archival data our society has begun to compile on the internet?
by Seth Denbo via Perspectives on History on May 7, 2019

The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show Lives on in the Internet Archive

Episodes from the infamous hip-hop radio show of the '90s.
by Drew Millard via The Outline on May 26, 2018
Words from Merriam-Webster's "Time Traveler"

Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster

An interactive feature that displays the new words that were used in print each year, going back centuries.
via Merriam-Webster on August 15, 2017

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