For many years, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) maintained a large library of books on drug use and policy at its New York City headquarters. As researchers shifted to working online, DPA’s Jules Netherland said she noticed fewer people coming into the office to use the collection.
“It became clear if we really wanted people to benefit from our resources that digitization was the way to go,” said Netherland, managing director of the Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement. It was also an opportunity to add to the growing collection of the Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS).
DPA donated its book collection to the Internet Archive to be digitized and made available for lending and for the print disabled. A team was sent to New York to pick up the books, which were packaged onto three pallets and shipped to a facility for scanning and storage.
Now, the digital version of the DPA library, with 2,260 items, is available to the public at https://archive.org/details/dpa. It is part of the larger SALIS collection of 8,647 items on alcohol and substance abuse digitized by SALIS.
The public has responded with curiosity. In January, 10,000 items were accessed in the digitized collection. Rosenberg speculates the audience is likely researchers, historians, healthcare providers, and policymakers.
In the rapidly evolving field of drug policy, which spans many disciplines, Netherland said it’s important to provide evidence-based information to the public. The hope is to enhance advocacy efforts with easier access to the organization’s collection. DPA developed a resource guide to encourage its use on the Internet Archive.
In donating its collection, DPA helped build the Internet Archive’s SALIS collection. Since 2008, SALIS has helped preserve thousands of items from physical libraries with research from drug and alcohol fields that have closed, said Andrea Mitchell, SALIS executive director.
About 30 years ago, there were approximately 95 libraries, clearinghouses, and resource centers around the world devoted to collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating information concerning alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, Mitchell said. However, today the majority of those libraries or databases have closed. The U.S. government has also shut down collections, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose library went back to 1935. “We’re losing important resources and knowledge,” Mitchell said.
This leaves a void in access that has been filled, in part, by digitized collections online. Mitchell said The SALIS Collection includes materials that go back to 1774 and books from medicine, sociology, psychology, economics, law and policy, criminal justice, and other fields. In addition to books, there are government documents, grey literature, and newsletters.
The DPA collection was one of the larger libraries in the U.S., Mitchell said, and its donation to the Internet Archive is significant and welcome.
The Internet Archive is interested in receiving more curated collections like DPA’s on specific subject matters, Rosenberg added. “These really valuable books for research and resources are often not preserved when funding is lost at the library that houses them,” she saidTo find out more about the physical item donation process, go to the Help page for details.
A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive—demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It’s an attack on the Internet Archive itself.
This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve—including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet.
At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended—not dismantled.
This isn’t just about music. It’s about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture.
The following guest post from Christina Moretta, Photo Curator and Acting San Francisco History Center Manager at San Francisco Public Library, is part of a series written by members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories.
San Francisco History Center (SFHC) of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) is the official archive for the City and County of San Francisco. SFHC serves all library users and levels of interest, from the merely curious to those engaging in scholarly research. Because of the Center’s archival function, it also administers the archival collections of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.
Internet Archive has supported our work to preserve and provide access to San Francisco’s history in many ways. Since 2007, Internet Archive has hosted SFPL digitized content, including local documents and city directories. In 2017, SFPL became one of the first members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. This program has provided us with the tools we need to preserve local web-based content that will be important for future researchers investigating San Francisco’s history.
The East/West (Dong xi bao) newspaper was acquired the easy way – original subscription by the SFPL’s Periodical Department in the late 1960s. There are only a handful of institutions that have East/West in their holdings as microfilm only. SFHC has the complete run in paper format.
In late 1966, Gordon Lew and two Chinese newspaper colleagues, Kenneth Joe and Ken Wong, began the idea of East/West, a bilingual weekly newspaper published out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The inaugural issue was in January 1967 and the newspaper ran for over twenty-two years with the last issue in September 1989. Lew became the publisher and editor, Joe worked in the Chinese section, and Wong was the principal writer in the English section. East/West was an important community newspaper, with extensive coverage of local Chinatown news, social activities, the work of Chinese American political figures, and international developments such as the normalization of China ties.
East/West was published in English and Chinese, and for many years, the two sections had approximately the same number of pages. The editorial and perhaps the main news article in the English section would be translated into Chinese. The Chinese section tended to focus more on culture, arts, and history, and it often reprinted articles from other sources. Advertisements filled both sections from the very beginning for local businesses and services. Most were community ads as the newspaper served non-profit organizations that arose in the wake of the Chinese American and Asian American empowerment movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Miss Chinatown, East/West, 1977, Vol. 11, no. 9, p. 14
Researchers and scholars of 20th-century Chinese American communities in the United States will appreciate the online availability of this unique resource. Many important issues cropped up in Chinese America and Asian America starting in the late 1960s and these can be found in East/West from the community perspective. By being a bilingual publication, the newspaper captured and shared the voice of the community. In addition, San Francisco Chinese Americans had limited political power in the 1960s. East/West focused on emerging Chinese American political figures and urged the community to increase its voting and general political participation.
In 2003, the Paul Radin Papers were donated to the SFHC by Professor Luis S. Kemnitzer of San Francisco State University on behalf of Calvin Fast Wolf and Mary Sacharoff-Fast Wolf. Mary Wolf was a would-be biographer of Radin who had acquired original papers from her friend and Radin’s widow, Doris Woodward Radin, as well as colleagues.
Dr. Paul Radin (1883-1959) is considered to be one of the formative influences in contemporary anthropology and ethnography in the United States and Europe. The bulk of the Paul Radin Papers consists of surveys from Radin’s supervision of over 200 workers who interviewed ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for the State Emergency Relief Administration of California (SERA) over a period of nine months in 1934-1935. Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), its abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco’s Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. The stated purpose was a cultural survey to find employment for “white collar” unemployed workers on temporary relief. Radin’s focus was “to study the steps in the adjustment and assimilation of minority groups in San Francisco and Alameda counties.” Bypassing a typical questionnaire method, Radin instead had the amateur interviewers record anything and everything which the interviewees wished to say. The results appear in a narrative format—sometimes in the form of poetry and short stories—and encompass all manner of immigrant experiences. Survey materials include typed and handwritten interviews and research on ethnic groups. Some interviewers identify themselves, and their report appears in their own hand.
Jon Y. Lee’s notes, Paul Radin Papers
A portion of the Paul Radin Papers includes SERA worker Jon Y. Lee’s papers including material for The Golden Mountain. Lee was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. Radin hired Lee as a fieldworker to collect Chinatown traditions in Oakland, California. Today, Lee is recognized as the first Asian American to work professionally as a folklorist.
With this collection online, international scholars can now easily access narratives about the immigrant experience from their country/region to assist with their diaspora studies. The typed descriptions allow for OCR discovery and for one to gather more information on the San Francisco immigrant experience in the 1910s and 1920s.
Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
The Internet Archive is proud to join in celebrating a major milestone in the preservation of global cultural heritage: documents related to the history of slavery in Aruba have been officially added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MoW) International Register. The digitized documents have been preserved and are accessible online through the Coleccion Aruba and the Internet Archive.
These newly recognized documents are held by the National Archives of Aruba (ANA) and the National Library of Aruba (BNA). They offer crucial insight into the lives of enslaved people and their descendants in Aruba, helping to illuminate a shared painful past and its continuing impact on the present.
The nomination was prepared collaboratively by the Aruba National Committee for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program (MoW-AW), UNESCO Aruba, ANA, and BNA. With the registration now official, these documents are not only globally recognized as having international significance—they are also more accessible than ever before.
The historical materials are available online through the Coleccion Aruba digital heritage site, as well as on the Internet Archive, supporting the goals of open access for schools, researchers, and the general public. This achievement underscores the importance of digitization and long-term preservation to ensure that future generations can continue to learn from these vital records.
The Internet Archive congratulates MoW-AW, UNESCO Aruba, the National Archives and National Library of Aruba, and their partners in Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Suriname, and the Netherlands on this historic achievement.
Brewster Kahle accepting the “Project Owl”, which he was awarded by the Dutch Wikipedia community. Telderszaal, Academiegebouw (Leiden). Wiki info.
The Internet Archive was recently honored for its valuable contribution to the Dutch-language Wikipedia community at an event at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle accepted the 2024 Project Uil award at a March 18 gathering of prominent figures in the Dutch open knowledge movement including librarians, archivists, scholars, and representatives from national cultural institutions.
The WikiUilen awards have been given out since 2015 on behalf of the Dutch Wikipedia community in recognition of hardworking Wikipedia volunteers and organizations. Candidates in eight categories (project, writer, editor, newcomer, etc.) are nominated and voted on by fellow Wikipedians. The Internet Archive received the project award and a small replica of an ancient Greek owl sculpture. (“Uilen” in Dutch translates to “owls” in English.)
“The owl is a symbol of wisdom,” said Ronald Velgersdijk, organizer of the Dutch awards, in presenting the statue to Kahle. “We give this project award because the Internet Archive is very important for sharing knowledge and it is very important for Wikimedia. We use it a lot to cite our sources and find information.”
In a concerted effort to ground the information ecosystem in facts, Kahle explained how the Internet Archive has prioritized obtaining and digitizing books referenced in Wikipedia. Since 2016, the Internet Archive has identified and fixed more than 22 million broken links in over 200 language editions of Wikipedia. By pointing readers back to archived web pages in the Wayback Machine and digital books available online, the aim is to increase the credibility of Wikipedia with reliable links and sources, he said.
“The partnership between Wikipedia and the Internet Archive is very strong and growing,” Kahle said.
Watch the Wiki Owl presentation to Internet Archive
Jos Damen, a librarian at Leiden University, helped host the event, which drew nearly 100 attendees. An advocate of open access publishing and a Dutch Wikipedian with over 1 million edits, Damen said he admires the work of the Internet Archive and leans on its resources.
“First and foremost of value is the presence of websites in the Wayback Machine,” Damen said. “As librarians, we all know that links that you access now will be gone in two to five years. It’s important to see these links frozen in time in the Wayback Machine, and then being able to have that reference in Wikipedia.”
Damen said it’s critical to not only fix links to books, but also to add images and attribution for photos on Wikipedia. For instance, a photograph of small copper stones in the pavement in several European countries, signifying the last place where Jewish people lived before they were taken to concentration camps, is a powerful image that can make a page more engaging, he said. (See Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein)
Kahle’s remarks covered the history, evolving support, and challenges facing libraries. He spoke about the mission of the Internet Archive to provide universal access to all knowledge, and gave an overview of Internet Archive Europe – which has a somewhat different focus.
“The idea [of Internet Archive Europe] is to try to build our collective intelligence using all sorts of interesting tools so we can have better decision making,” Kahle said.
Last November, Beatrice Murch was named Program Manager of Internet Archive Europe. She is working to find open knowledge champions in Europe interested in making information in a variety of languages translated and available in new ways.
“The hope is that Internet Archive Europe can use AI tools to bring collections to life and make them more interesting to the public,” Murch said. “We are trying hard to find the right message to engage partners and make data on the Internet Archive accessible to more people, including those with disabilities.
”The Wiki-Uil in the Netherlands is modeled after the German example, started in 2014. Learn more about the Dutch Wiki Uil awards.
The following discussion between writer Caralee Adams and book historian Allie Alvis is part of ourVanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Like many in the early days of Instagram, Allie Alvis shared what they had for dinner or funny things they encountered on their personal account. It was in Edinburgh, Scotland, when pursuing their master’s degree in book history that they were inspired to post about the university’s incredible book collection, library and items from the used and antiquarian bookshop where they worked.
“To my surprise, people really, really enjoyed it,” said Alvis, of videos and photos they curated of delicately paging through rare books. “I started getting questions from friends and family. And then it just sort of picked up steam with institutions and bookish colleagues following me. I have no idea how I ended up at 255,000 followers now.”
The self-described “pink-haired book historian” mainly posts on Instagram (@Book_Historia), but also is active on TikTok, X, Bluesky, Tumblr, Threads and Facebook. Alvis aims to share something new at least once a week, in addition to working as curator of special collections at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.
Alvis said they never set out to become a super popular influencer, but they enjoy sharing their passion for rare books and educating the public.
“It’s been a crazy ride that my followers have grown to such an extent,” they said. “It really has been a grand experiment.”
Among the most popular items they’ve recently shared: a French sample book of foil ornaments from the late 19th century. “It’s just delicious—sparkly, metal. It’s just to die for,” they said.
Alvis’s posts are filled with descriptive narration and an authentic reverence for the historic books they present. They maintain that there’s more to a rare book than what’s on its pages. There’s history behind the author who wrote it, the place where it was made, and the materials used to make it.
“Because that history remains, you want to preserve it,” Alvis said. “You want to keep it in the best possible condition so other people can learn from it.”
Having materials online means that people from all parts of the world can view them without having to travel, which is good for the environment. It’s also useful in knowledge sharing and teaching to have access from beyond your local library, said Alvis, who has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Kansas, a master’s of science in book history at the University of Edinburgh and master’s of science in information management from the University of Glasgow.
“I approach digital initiatives from an access standpoint,” Alvis said. “I love that digitization and the Internet Archive gives more people access to materials—and that helps to preserve it.”
Whether putting together scholarly articles or a social media post, Alvis turns to many sources in their research—including the Internet Archive. They especially appreciate the ephemeral material that it has preserved, digitized and made freely available, along with the vast collection of books.
“I have my library reference books at home and in the office, but sometimes that one book you need that one page from is just out of reach,” Alvis said. “The short-time lending option on the Internet Archive has saved me so many times.”
In their work curating decorative arts and art history, some objects are easier to capture through scanning than others. For example, it can be challenging for digital preservation to reflect the dimensionality of button samples, metal ornaments, or perfume labels. But it is useful with wallpaper samples or other flat objects. There are also limits because of the sheer volume of material and limited resources.
Alvis said librarians, academics, booksellers, and book collectors are embracing digitization and social media as tools to both further knowledge and highlight collections. Many also now understand that access is an important part of preservation.
“It would be amazing if everything could be scanned—but there is just so much of it,” Alvis said.
Still, as a librarian, Alvis said, much has been saved—and for that, they’re thankful: “It is only because previous generations have preserved this material—to the extent that they have—that I have work.”
Lila Bailey gives the keynote address at Georgetown Law’s iPIP Clinic Celebration.
Libraries, now more than ever, need innovative, dedicated champions to help them meet the needs of the public in the digital age. Internet Archive’s Lila Bailey said she sees hope in the talents of Georgetown University law students working at the school’s Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic (iPIP).
Bailey, Internet Archive’s senior policy counsel, was the keynote speaker at iPIP’s fifth anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C., on March 27. She praised the clinic for providing quality research and creative work products on projects that have helped the Internet Archive promote awareness of the public domain, controlled digital lending, and other issues related to the public interest mission of libraries at a challenging time.
“Libraries are at the forefront of using technologies of the day to serve the informational needs of their communities. And they do it without trying to sell you anything, and without selling any data about you either,” Bailey said. “Right now, libraries—whether they are digital, or brick and mortar—are under threat.”
Between moves to ban books, defund institutions, and dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, libraries are facing perilous times. Publishers have simply stopped selling digital books to libraries, forcing them to use commercial platforms that come with terms and conditions that restrict how those materials may be used, Bailey explained. The iPIP clinic had a hand in drafting a paper on the topic, she noted, called, “The Publisher Playbook.”
Today, libraries need lawyers, yet most don’t have in-house counsel, Bailey said. That makes the contributions of student law clinics so vital at this juncture.
“Clinics play an important role in the library and public interest tech community by expanding our capacity to tackle these existential threats and to pursue opportunities for positive changes,” Bailey said. “[iPIP’s Founder] Amanda Levendowski has built a truly outstanding clinical program in these five short years.”
Bailey explained under copyright law, a library can lend out a book it owns to as many people as it wants to, for as long as it wants to. It can also preserve a book for the long term, and make it available long past when a publisher may sell it. The law also allows libraries to make copies of a book in an accessible format for patrons who are blind or have other print-disabilities, and participate in interlibrary loan arrangements, so that patrons of other libraries can access books they don’t have in their own collections. Yet, Bailey said, under these licensing models with publishers, none of those practices is allowed.
“These market-based threats are a completely new kind of challenge that require creative legal and policy interventions,” Bailey said.
In her remarks, Bailey described how her interest in the field began nearly twenty years ago when she chose to go to law school at University of California Berkeley, in part because of its Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “[The internet] was new. I was optimistic to democratize access to information and saw it as a revolutionary force,” she said. Bailey’s first client at the clinic was the Internet Archive, working on a project that would eventually become the TV News Archive. She later became a teaching fellow at the clinic, and joined the Internet Archive staff in 2017.
Since iPIP’s first semester in 2020, Bailey said she has worked closely with student teams that exceeded her expectations, delivering materials to advance the needs of the Internet Archive, and the wider library community.
“The iPIP Clinic has become an indispensable partner to me as I do my work as an advocate for libraries working to build a healthier digital information ecosystem,” Bailey said.
Amanda Levendowski, associate professor of law and the founding director of the iPIP Clinic, credited Bailey and her willingness to work with students as a reason the clinic has been successful in tackling cutting-edge issues at the intersection of technological advancements and social justice.
“Library lawyering work is an exercise in imagination,” Levendowski said. “A sense of play and creativity around the law has never been more important, because that’s going to be how we get out of the moment we’re in.”
The following guest post from digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
I would never have thought I would see the day when the library system itself is under attack.
At home I had a couple of shelves of treasured kids’ books while my parents had walls coated with books. The books and periodicals of my writer and publisher grandfather were on a special bookshelf in the room next to the kitchen—maybe not consulted often, but proudly protected and displayed. But the delight of first going to the White Plains Public Library is indelibly imprinted in my mind—the bookshelves seemed to go on forever. There was book after book after Alice in Wonderland in the card catalog, books about mathematical recreations I could not imagine finding anywhere else, and record albums I could borrow. And I still remember the librarian saying, “You can read any of these books you want, and if we don’t have the one you want, we can get it for you [through the magic of interlibrary loan].” And this was all for free, which was the only thing that worked for a child. And available to everyone who could get their bones through that door of that magic place.
As a child, I did not know how special libraries were—I thought it was just how society worked—I thought there always were and always would be public libraries. I did not realize how fragile this system was until I became a digital librarian in order to make this promise come true for the next generation, a generation of digital learners. I did not think that in my lifetime this offer, this seeming human right, would be threatened by the people that made the fantasy-land of the White Plains Public Library possible: the corporate publishers.
Based on a simple but catastrophic business decision, the big publishers are making it impossible for libraries to do their core functions of preservation and enduring access in the digital era. Netflix, for instance, recently changed its terms of service to explicitly prohibit archiving, therefore allowing them to remove or change any movie for all subscribers at once.1 The decision of the big publishers that is so threatening to the mission of libraries is to stop selling their products. Their books, music, and videos—as the world moves digital—are only available for temporary access by library patrons from databases the publishers control.
At the dawn of the Internet age, we dreamed of a different future, a future where authors got paid for their work, where writings would find their natural audience, where small publishers would flourish supporting a wider range of authors, where new publications and services would democratize production and access to information. The Internet could have been used to create this future, and many of us have worked hard to make it come true, but the lack of antitrust enforcement led to rapid consolidation of publishers, Internet technologies allowed successful online publishers to become dominant worldwide, and an advertising model that made for very few commercial winners. This toxic brew of the collapse of independent publishers and limited commercial platform controlling distribution has made the decentralized Internet seem like a lost opportunity.
But there is hope for libraries and a public seeking alternatives to the flood of disinformation and promoted materials coming from online and offline information producers. Libraries are still funded and staffed with smart, caring professionals. Readers are becoming more media-aware and discerning. Best of all, people are still free to create and publish quality works with the remaining distribution and compensation structures. It is still possible to have a game with many winners, but maybe this window is closing.
To preserve the library system’s ability to help create an informed citizenry, we need libraries to buy, preserve, and offer free public access to the broad public. Our libraries have traditionally supported local authors and local publishers, and preserved a broad range of text, audio, and moving image materials. Libraries, when not stopped, have moved with the times, through microfilm and CD-ROMs, and now to the Internet in order to provide preservation and access. Our collective budgets in the United States support over 5% of all trade publishing revenues8—enough to cause a leveraged buyout firm, KKR, to find buying major publisher Simon and Schuster a good investment.9 Our libraries are a captive market for a shrinking number of academic and trade publishers.
The best case is that large publishers see the value in selling their digital products through multiple marketplaces, including to libraries. The next best is that independent publishers sell to libraries, and libraries eagerly buy, preserve, and lend from their owned collections. Authors, musicians, filmmakers and creators of all kinds could choose publishers and websites that sell to libraries.10
Our evolving digital age can be our next Carnegie moment or it can be a Library of Alexandria moment. It is up to us.
References
Netflix. 2025. Terms & Conditions. https://www.netflix.shop/pages/terms-conditions “You agree not to archive, download (other than through caching necessary for personal use, to complete a product purchase or submit a customer service request), reproduce, distribute, modify, display, perform, publish, license, create derivative works from, offer for sale, or use content and information contained on or obtained from or through the Shop without express written permission from Netflix and its licensors.” ↩︎
The following guest post from artist and writer Brooke Palmieri is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
As a writer and artist that draws on the long history of gender nonconformity in my work, a driving force behind my practice is the idea that a longing for history will always be a fundamental aspect of humanity, so long as memory itself serves as a foundation for human consciousness. Everyone has a history, but the majority of people are not taught how to look back in order to find it. One problem is the depth and breadth of our losses. People and their prized possessions are destroyed by accident and by design throughout history: armed conflict, invasion, willful destruction, natural disaster, decay. Then there is the fantasy of destruction, a destructive force in its own right, the perception that nothing survives. That fantasy begets a reality of its own: because I don’t go looking for what survives, I don’t find it, or I don’t recognize it when I see it. This is true across subcultures and among historically marginalized or oppressed groups, and for the queer and trans subjects whose histories I am interested in recovering in particular. In the twenty-first century, access to queer and trans history is an accident of birth: knowing someone in your family or neighborhood, living in a place where it isn’t legislated against, going to a school that dares teach it, affording admission into one of the universities that offers classes on it.
My research process tends to triangulate between the archive of my own weird and imperfect human experiences and the debris I collect around them, small collections amassed by and for queer and trans people, and larger institutions that also contain relevant material that begs to be recontextualized. Or to make it personal: to write my upcoming book Bargain Witch: Essays in Self Initiation, I used my journals and the Wayback Machine to look at old websites I’d made when I was 14, the archive of the William Way LGBT center in Philadelphia where I grew up, and special collections at major institutions like the Fales Library at NYU, the Digital Transgender Archive at Northwestern University, and the British Library in London. All my adult life I’ve made pilgrimage between the intimate domestic spaces where people preserve their own histories, to local collections set up on shoestring budgets as a labor of love, to the vast, climate-controlled repositories of state and higher education that have more recently begun to preserve our histories, each enhancing what it is possible for me to know, delight in, or mourn, about where I have come from, the forebears by blood and by choice that imbue my life with its many possibilities.
It’s a creative act to find and make sense of my own history, one that requires a leap of faith in order to fill in the silences, erasures, omissions, and genuine mysteries that old books and documents, records and artifacts, represent. A lot is left to the imagination. Much of what survives from the past asks more questions than we can answer. This is true for queer and trans archival traces, as it is for other aspects of humanity that are poorly accounted for in public records, or actively discriminated against through surveillance and omission in equal parts.
Classically, archives are brutal, desolate places to find humanity; they were never meant to record the nuances of flesh and blood existence so much as they originate as a way governments keep track of their resources. It has taken millennia for us to conceive of records as places where humanity might be honored rather than betrayed. This is an epic change: I am in awe of the fact that I live in a time where the heft of documentary history—clay, parchment, paper, and now pixel—is shifting paradigms from records kept by anonymous paid laborers to flatten life into statistics, to records kept by people who dare to name themselves and their subjectivity, who collect something of themselves and their obsessions, for other kindred spirits to find. From archives as places meant to consolidate power, to places containing mess and sprawl, places for heated encounters.
In the past few decades of “living with the internet” these places and encounters have multiplied exponentially, as queer and trans subcultures have relied on message boards, blogs, and personal websites to share information. I personally relied (and still rely on) on reddit, and the classic, Hudson’s FTM Resource Guide (www.ftmguide.org), and TopSurgery.Net to navigate the healthcare system in both the UK and USA in order to access hormones and surgery—part of a much longer tradition of “the Transgender Internet” that Avery Dame-Griff chronicles in his book The Two Revolutions (2023). To say nothing of AOL in the early 2000s, the culture on Tumblr in the early-to-mid 2010s and printed publications like Original Plumbing andarchived copies of the FTM Newsletter. Digital environments informed me of physical places, and vice versa, and each expanded and embellished my appreciation of the other. From reading books and trawling the internet, I knew places like San Francisco, New York, London, and Berlin would be where I could find other trans people. When I moved to London, I knew to go to Gay’s the Word, a queer bookshop that first opened in 1979, to make friends, and eventually, to get a job. When I started my own queer book club, or wanted to find zine fairs or club nights, I often found information about them on tumblr or instagram. When traveling to new cities, a gay friend tipped me off that any place recommended by BUTT Magazine would show me a good time.
But in my queer and trans context, both digital and paper-based archives and libraries are often labors of love, made from scratch, published with a “by us for us” ethos that is under-resourced and so always in danger of disappearing. Most queer publishing from the 1960s onward was issued in small, independent presses that have disappeared. An interesting model for documenting this is the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, where resources and expertise is shared to catalog and digitize collections materials in a centrally kept database. This is mutually beneficial to the places where the materials are kept—accurate cataloging is crucial to using and developing any archive—as well as to interested audiences further afield. And this feels also like a pragmatic approach to the reality of loss: we might not be able to predict what will survive over time, but keeping abundant records in multiple locations of what has existed will at least allow us to mourn our losses.
A culmination of my interests in hunting and gathering queer history is my imprint and traveling installation: CAMP BOOKS. I started CAMP BOOKS in 2018 as a way to highlight the places I’d most enjoyed meeting queer and trans people–independent bookshops, which have a rich, radical history throughout subculture–and as a way to keep the focus on making and distributing publications about the obscure histories I was unearthing in my research. Before libraries sought to cater to an LGBTQIA+ readership, specialist bookshops like the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, Giovanni’s Room, and Gay’s the Word were the only places you could find concentrations of queer, feminist books with positive portrayals of queer lives. These shops were hubs of culture: places where community events were held and publicized, activists groups were able to meet, and friendship and romance could blossom in broad daylight. CAMP BOOKS sets up pop-up bookshops, tables at art and zine fairs, and also builds installations in galleries and community spaces to continue this tradition. I also sell rare books and ephemera related to queer history through CAMP BOOKS in order to fund our efforts, including new publications, zines, and posters related to queer and trans history. The CAMP BOOKS motto is: “Queer Pasts Nourish Queer Futures,” and this extends to our model of generating funds from past efforts to fund new writing and work. I also believe this logic can extend to anyone: preserving what interests you about the past brings a particular pleasure of connection into the present. Most of the people I have loved in my life, I have met and known through shared obsessions with the past, and it has brought a lot of pleasure and adventure into my life.
An abiding concern I have had about cultural preservation—in my case, subcultural preservation, because the people I love across time existed in a myriad of DIY subcultures that often cross-pollinated art, music, and literary influences—and have heard from others, revolves around the question of inheritance and access. You can inherit books and papers, art and artifacts, but you can’t inherit e-books, and born digital archives require specialist care and technology. My hope is that this divide is bridged by reconsidering the nature of inheritance itself: rather than an individual’s gain, queer and trans history is something that we are all heir to, and can all benefit from accessing. Large institutions, and large digital repositories in particular, play a crucial role in rewriting the meaning of inheritance by offering freely accessible, and accurately cataloged, information. But ultimately, archives that document human experience begin at home, and rely on people whose love for their lives, their friends, and their scenes inspire them to save posters, photographs, and other receipts–online and offline–that document their experiences. I hope after reading this, you start saving something of your life now.
About the author
Brooke Palmieri is an artist and writer working at the intersection of memory, history, and gender-bending alternate realities. In 2018, Brooke founded CAMP BOOKS, promoting access to queer history through rare archival materials, cheap zines, and workshops/installations. His book, Bargain Witch, comes out in Fall 2025 by Dopamine Books. You can find out more at http://bspalmieri.com.
Senior Organizer, mai ishikawa sutton, in front of the RightsCon25 sign
In late February, members of the DWeb Core Team and the DWeb community were in Taipei to attend the 13th edition of RightsCon, the largest global summit on human rights in the digital age. Namely, we were there to connect with the digital rights community. We wanted to participate in an event where thousands of people travel from around the world to discuss the current and future state of the internet, and to meet others who were involved in building decentralized, distributed, and peer-to-peer network technologies.
Thus we took the opportunity to organize activities before and during the conference: a local networking workshop co-organized with g0v, sessions on both DWeb organizing and how fiction can better depict surveillance technologies, a DWeb dinner, as well as a final day of tabling in the halls of the venue.
DWeb x g0v Local Network Workshop
Michael Suantak, Cheng of g0v, and mai standing in front of National Taipei University of Technology where the community network workshop took place
We partnered with g0v, the leading decentralized civic technology community in Taiwan, to co-organize an event focused on local community networks at the National Taipei University of Technology. When we met with them several months ago, g0v leaders told us that they wanted to connect with those building and stewarding community networks. Such networks are controlled directly by communities, especially in places where internet access is non-existent or undermined, in order to maintain local network services and ensure internet connections are available or affordable. In Taiwan, these types of decentralized network infrastructures are a potential lifeline, as internet shutdowns in the country remain an ever-present threat.
DWeb standing banner in front of the classroom where the workshop took place
Our event, “Building Resilient Connections: A Hands-on Local Network Workshop” dove into the core concepts of community networks, their technical setups, and the ways they’re making a difference in under-served communities worldwide.
We had a great turnout: attended by more than 35 people. Since we had a survey built into our registration form, we knew what topics the participants were interested in learning about and tailored the workshop to them. These included community networks’ key challenges and opportunities, technical overview and tools, and issues surrounding their ethics, privacy and security.
Cheng introducing g0v at the community network workshop
Notably, we had community network leaders from Myanmar, Taiwan, and Indonesia present case studies on their community networks, from the technologies they use to the ways they govern and manage the networks. We were lucky to be able to bring Michael Suantak to lead the presentations and the workshop on locally-hosted services. He was a 2024 DWeb Fellow, but for visa reasons he was not able to attend DWeb Camp in person, so we were happy to learn from him in person!
Michael Suantak giving a presentation on local community networks
Sean of Mesh TWC also gave a presentation and workshop, as well as Gustaff H. Iskandar of Common Room who joined us from Indonesia. The sessions were not recorded, but you can view their notes and slides below (note: these are Google docs and Google slides).
Slide from a presentation by Gustaff of Common Room on community networks
We ended with a few hands-on activities with Meshtastic LoRa devices and local-first services, as well as a discussion on the role of community networks in digital literacy and empowerment.
Group photo of the community networks workshop who stayed until the end!
Attending RightsCon 2025
RightsCon brings over 3,000 people from all corners of the globe to discuss the most pressing concerns facing people’s digital rights today. At a sprawling convention center in Taipei, hundreds of sessions took place across the last week of February, on issues related to free expression, privacy, and innovation and creativity online — specifically surrounding organizing tactics, policy advocacy, and sustaining movements in the face of rising authoritarianism worldwide. There was also notable interest in decentralized web solutions to these crises, with sessions led by DWeb Camp attendees, the Social Web Foundation, Equalitie, Project Liberty, Open Future, WITNESS, Open Archive, and Creative Commons.
RightsCon25 Opening Ceremony
Round Table DWeb Workshop
We led a workshop discussion on strategies for decentralized, transnational organizing. Approximately 25 people attended and came to learn about the DWeb community. We shared our approach to building trust and solidarity between projects and individuals working to create a decentralized web that is usable, secure, and people-centric, all in spite of the exploitative and profit-driven status quo of the Internet. We spent the hour strategizing effective tactics for transnational organizing. Namely, how to use in-person and online gatherings to organize, share resources, and build enduring connections to strengthen our efforts.
Stop Surveillance Copaganda Workshops
Lia Holland of Fight for the Future and I co-facilitated three workshops on the Stop Surveillance Copaganda project, a partnership between Fight For the Future and COMPOST Magazine. The discussions centered around how we better support fiction that depicts futures and alternate realities where privacy is a universally respected human right. Attendees shared useful resources and analyses of surveillance tech’s impacts, as well as real-world tactics to resist illegal surveillance. Everything we gleaned from that week will go into a toolkit for authors and artists to more justly depict surveillance technologies.
Stop Surveillance Copaganda Session at RightsCon25
RightsCon Booth
We signed up to table at RightsCon in order to introduce ourselves to the digital rights community and meet those working to build alternative, decentralized technologies. Dozens of new and familiar faces stopped by to grab our stickers and zines, and to learn about what the DWeb community has been doing to build our movement.
Senior Organizer, mai, tabling at RightsCon25
DWebbers Dinner
Mid-conference, we organized a DWeb hot pot dinner for those of us in town for the event!
Group photo of DWebbers having hot pot!
Attending RightsCon this year felt incredibly productive and worthwhile. We’ll likely be there at the next one — in order to build better webs and learn from the past, it’s crucial that we connect with those directly confronting the pervasive challenges of the mainstream internet. That has always been our north star: to build decentralized technologies that help solve real world problems, not just in the future, but now.
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