Last month, The Internet Archive — the largest online collection of web archives in the world — suffered several cyberattacks. The nonprofit organization took down its website, including its online archive of digital material, the Wayback Machine, to resecure user information. When all was said and done, hackers walked away with data from 31 million users.
Recent cybersecurity issues are only one of the many obstacles facing the archive. In September, a U.S. Appellate Court affirmed a ruling that the organization’s book digitization program violates copyright law. After the ruling, 500,000 scanned library books were removed from the website and can no longer be accessed digitally without charge. As an organization aiming “to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge,” the Internet Archive’s very existence is jeopardized by costly legal battles and copyright restrictions.
The preservation of internet web pages and promotion of free access to books are not lucrative businesses, and the organization relies entirely on individual donations and grants to support itself financially. They also depend on donations from libraries in order to add to their collection, including entire libraries from several colleges such as Bay State College and Marygrove College. Although the archive has not explicitly commented on their current financial status, it seems likely that their recent struggles have strained their limited budget, further preventing them from taking adequate security measures. Until very recently, their website displayed a donation banner asking that users join “the fight for quality information.”
Not only do online archives expand access to educational material, cultural artifacts and entertainment, but website preservation projects like the Wayback Machine are crucial in preventing digital decay — the disappearance of internet web pages and publications. Dedicating digital real estate to old articles, blogs and otherwise obsolete posts is expensive. Google’s algorithm also prioritizes fast-loading websites, encouraging site managers to take past articles and publications offline in favor of a higher spot in the search results. But, the Wayback Machine takes “snapshots” of web pages throughout their existence and allows anyone to travel back to a website’s layout and contents in any given year, month or day depending on the website. For instance, I was able to resurrect my middle school blog that has been offline for several years. With the Wayback Machine, I easily found my 2016 fashion opinion pieces, and, once again, reminded myself why I am studying political science and not fashion merchandising.
Beyond preserving my failed middle school passion projects, the archive ensures that I can access important academic media that might have otherwise been forever lost to researchers and students. A 2023 report found that 54% of Wikipedia pages and 21% of government web pages include at least one broken reference link. Wikipedia, while not an academic source in itself, uses scholarly, reputable publications in order to synthesize summaries and overviews of specific topics, events or people. Gaps in Wikipedia references don’t just compromise the validity of the page itself, but indicate a loss of a credible, useful primary or secondary source.
We think of the internet as an ever-lasting data storage junkpile — somewhere information lives on forever, to our benefit or embarrassment — but the average lifespan of a website is only around 2.6 years. A quarter of all internet pages that existed between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible via search engines.
Preserving digital content is not only necessary for strictly academic material, but also for the documentation of political and cultural events. In 2018, the Associated Press fact-checked Donald Trump using the Wayback Machine. In a tweet, then-President Trump claimed that Google failed to celebrate his State of the Union Address as it did for Former President Barack Obama. However, archived web pages proved that Google did, in fact, highlight Trump’s speech, disproving his claims of the platform having a liberal bias.
Trump’s unremarkable tweets may seem like a futile use for digital archives, but they exemplify the need to preserve accurate historical records to hold leaders accountable in the wake of rising political misinformation. Tools like the Wayback Machine also contribute to contemporary social science research, allowing academics to understand how and why the internet affects culture and society. Digital history, if preserved, offers extensive documentation of modern history, protecting “free inquiry” — a core component of Brown’s mission.
Brown’s mission statement echoes that of the Internet Archive: “preserving knowledge” to the benefit of “the community, the nation and the world.” As a home to faculty and students that rely on digital archives, but more importantly as an institution dedicated to betterment of education and universal promotion of knowledge, Brown currently shares its resources with digital archivists, including The Internet Archive.
Through its membership in The Boston Library Consortium, Brown joined a pledge to digitize over 34 million volumes in the public domain, a collective donation of $845,000 between all participating institutions. The Internet Archive has since joined the consortium, allowing members to share resources with the organization and visa versa. However, the archive’s pioneering efforts extend beyond the digitization of out-of-copyright books, most notably its preservation of 835 billion internet web pages and 10.6 million video recordings.
The Internet Archive has proved itself as a proponent of global knowledge, a worthwhile effort for any institution of higher learning. Brown has a commitment to its students, faculty and the world to further support their ongoing efforts and to call upon other institutions to do the same. By helping to fund and enhance the archive’s security measures, educational institutions can protect the diverse array of material The Internet Archive stores. Donating library materials is a crucial component of collective contribution, but, ultimately, those material donations are obsolete if they become inaccessible to the public. Should it lead a campaign to aid the archive in its time of immense need, Brown will not only distinguish itself as a community truly dedicated to its values, but inspire a higher-education rescue mission to save our digital history.
