What does it mean to preserve culture in an age of disappearing websites, platform-controlled media, and fragile digital memories? In the final episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, Future Knowledge hosts Dave Hansen and Chris Freeland sit down with musician and series host Vida Vojić and producer Alice Bridgwood to reflect on the conversations, ideas, and lessons that emerged throughout the series.
Looking back on discussions about cookbooks, queer archives, African folklore, Papiamento, and more, Vida and Alice explore the common threads connecting seemingly disparate forms of cultural preservation. They reflect on how culture is shaped not only by institutions, but by communities and individuals who choose what to remember, share, and pass on. The conversation examines the challenges of living in an “age of platforms,” the risks of relying on technology and corporations to steward cultural memory, and the growing movement toward community-driven preservation efforts. Along the way, the group discusses what surprised them most, how the series changed their own habits and perspectives, and why they remain hopeful that people everywhere can play an active role in keeping culture alive. Rather than ending on a note of loss, the episode offers a hopeful reminder that culture survives when people care enough to preserve, share, and reimagine it together.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
Languages can vanish just as easily as books, websites, or archives—and when they do, entire ways of understanding the world can disappear with them. In the fifth episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with Peter Scholing of Biblioteca Nacional Aruba and the Coleccion Aruba digital heritage platform about the importance of preserving Papiamento, Aruba’s creole language, and the cultural heritage it carries.
Peter shares the story of how Aruba’s libraries, archives, and cultural institutions came together to build a digital collection that now preserves hundreds of thousands of documents, photographs, newspapers, recordings, and books. The conversation explores the unique preservation challenges facing island communities, from geographic isolation and climate risks to the legacy of colonialism, which has scattered much of Aruba’s historical record across multiple countries and languages. Peter explains why expanding access to materials in Papiamento is essential for education, cultural identity, and historical understanding, and how digitization is helping unlock previously inaccessible collections. Looking ahead, he discusses the opportunities new technologies offer for smaller languages and why ensuring a vibrant digital future for Papiamento is a crucial part of preserving Aruba’s culture for generations to come.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
Folktales are more than stories—they are living records of culture, identity, and collective memory. In the fourth episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with writer and researcher Helen Nde, founder of Mythological Africans, and folklorist Laura Gibbs about the importance of preserving African folklore in the digital age. Together, they explore how stories help communities understand themselves, pass down knowledge across generations, and make sense of a changing world.
The conversation examines the challenges of preserving oral traditions, from the distortions introduced by colonial collectors to the loss of context when dynamic storytelling practices are reduced to written records. Helen and Laura discuss how digitization can help make folklore more accessible and discoverable, while also opening new possibilities for communities to share and reinterpret their stories online. They also reflect on the importance of trustworthy archives in an era when myths and historical narratives are increasingly used to shape political and cultural identities. Ultimately, the episode asks what it will take to ensure that these rich storytelling traditions remain available—not as relics of the past, but as living resources for future generations.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
Every day, information professionals at libraries, archives, museums and research organizations all over the world work to ensure that knowledge remains available for future generations. From preserving websites before they disappear to digitizing books, safeguarding government information, and expanding access to cultural heritage, there’s always something happening behind the scenes.
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In a new article, “The Political Threats of Vanishing Culture and the Need to Protect Our Future Memory,” Michael Menna and Lila Bailey argue that the shift from buying physical media to licensing digital content has created a first-order political crisis. The piece builds on the groundwork laid in Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record, tracing the problem across five arenas—educational resources, journalism, civic and movement archives, religious study, and environmental science—to show how digital ephemerality is already undermining people’s ability to learn, organize, and hold power accountable.
The article’s second half revisits the four digital rights at the heart of the Our Future Memory movement: the rights to collect, preserve, provide access to, and collaborate around digital materials—the same things memory institutions have always done with physical collections. It walks through why each right matters on its own terms, from the Wiley e-book withdrawal that blindsided George Washington University to the federal government’s removal of climate data and environmental justice tools like EJScreen. The throughline is simple: none of this is inevitable. Vanishing culture is a policy choice, and it’s one we can still reverse if libraries, archives, and museums make the case together instead of absorbing these losses one at a time.
This piece is a call to action as much as an analysis. If you work at or care about a library, archive, or museum, we hope you’ll read the full article over at The Political Librarian, and consider signing the Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online at ourfuturememory.org. The more institutions that add their names, the harder it becomes for publishers and platforms to treat our shared cultural memory as disposable.
Queer history has often been overlooked, erased, or excluded from traditional archives. In the third episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with writer, artist, and archivist Brooke Palmieri about the vital role queer archives play in preserving memory, identity, and community. Drawing on his work with CAMP BOOKS and his research into LGBTQ+ history, Brooke explores why archives matter—not just as collections of records, but as tools for helping people understand where they come from and imagine new futures.
The conversation traces how queer communities have built their own archives in response to historical exclusion from mainstream institutions, creating spaces where stories of love, activism, creativity, and survival can be preserved and shared. Brooke reflects on the power of community-led archiving, the opportunities digital platforms create for expanding access to queer history, and the challenges posed by disappearing information, online misinformation, and unequal access to cultural heritage. Together, Vida and Brooke explore how preserving queer archives helps ensure that marginalized histories remain visible, accessible, and available to future generations.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
This year, as part of Google Summer of Code (GSoC), the Internet Archive is collaborating with two outstanding contributors to make it easier for patrons to find relevant books on Open Library.
Tanishq Sangwan, a 19-year-old from Gurugram, India, and Chisom Nnamani of Lagos, Nigeria, are two of 1,141 software developers from around the world who have been selected through GSoC to hone their engineering capabilities with open-source organizations.
“The Internet Archive’s focus for 2026 is: tools for participation. Participation must be earned by building an experience patrons want to return to.” said Mek, program lead for Open Library. “The work that both Chisom and Tanishq are doing is central to creating a more reliable Open Library experience, where readers can repeatedly discover, access, and enjoy books.”
Tanishq Sangwan
Sangwan, who just completed his second year of college studying artificial intelligence, is focusing on the journey of patrons who join Open Library and use it once, but do not return. His objective is to understand where patrons encounter barriers and identify opportunities to create a more useful, lasting experience.
Sangwan comes into the project with two years of experience from ZNotes, an educational organization that provides free notes and videos from students around the world.
“I built this passion and got this amazing feeling when my work was making an impact on people and they were receiving some value,” he said. “Now, Google Summer of Code is a wonderful opportunity to connect with open-source organizations and Open Library where its work directly impacts people’s lives.”
“This year’s collaboration is important because lots of patrons discover Open Library, but too often don’t always find the books they want,” Mek said.
The work begins when a patron lands on a book that is unavailable for reading. Soon, instead of reaching a dead end, patrons will be presented with nearby books on the same shelf that are available now.
When patrons find a relevant, available book, a simpler registration process will help them get started with fewer steps and return to the book they found. Furthermore, Sangwan is helping patrons connect with new book recommendations on an ongoing basis by introducing an activity feed to the account page.
“I like to hear about the patron psychology, how they’re interacting with the platform, and what’s going in their mind from the first moment to the very last,” he said. “We’ll be researching and conducting interviews with lost patrons so we can connect this bridge between patrons and the millions of books in our catalog.”
Chisom Nnamani
Nnamani, who already has certifications in Data Analytics and Data Engineering, just completed her sophomore year pursuing a second degree in Computer Science. At Open Library, Nnamani is leading a major cleanup effort to add structured tag data to books so they can be searched by genre and subgenre. Her work is paving the way for the addition of a wide variety of new searchable tags, including: moods, fiction and non-fiction, content warnings, and literary formats, such as memoirs, biographies, and more. By cleaning up messy data and enabling better genre and subject browsing, Chisom is helping remove barriers preventing patrons from discovering books they love.
“Today, many of our subject pages feel computer generated and can’t compare to the beautiful, curated experiences you find at small book stores,” says Mek. “The work Chisom is leading to map the messy subject tags we have to clear genres and subgenres will help us offer patrons a more useful and satisfying browsing experience.”
“I really care about books being accessible to people,” Nnamani said. “In Nigeria, we have limited access to physical libraries, so Open Library is something that matters. It gives everyone the opportunity to come and read any kind of book and gain insights.”
“This project is inspiring to me,” Nnamani said. “I like to work on projects where I can connect the data and infrastructure in ways that contribute to the organization’s goals. I enjoy helping to solve complex problems at the intersection of systems and data.”
Open Library Fellows work remotely, but meet regularly online with Internet Archive staff and mentors. At the end of the summer, each contributor will publish a blog post explaining their technical journey and experience gained.
Since 2005, Google’s Summer of Code has supported more than 23,000 students from 123 countries with stipends to receive mentorship and contribute 48 million lines of code to over 1,000 open source organizations worldwide.
Food is having a cultural moment. As America marks its 250th anniversary, new cookbooks celebrate endangered culinary traditions, UNESCO calls recipes “living heritage,” and chefs are rediscovering centuries-old techniques. But preserving food culture takes more than cooking—it takes preserving the books, handwritten recipes, community cookbooks, and stories that carry this knowledge from one generation to the next. That’s the focus of this week’s Future Knowledge episode with Katie Livingston.
Why preserve a cookbook? In the second episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with Katie Livingston, a doctoral researcher at Stanford University who studies domestic culture and women’s literature. Through the lens of family cookbooks, recipe collections, and food traditions, Katie explores why everyday cultural artifacts deserve preservation and what they can teach us about history, identity, and community.
From church cookbooks and handwritten recipe notes to the rise of food blogs, Katie explains how recipes capture regional traditions, social values, and forms of knowledge that are often overlooked by traditional preservation efforts. The conversation examines how domestic culture—particularly culture created and maintained by women—has historically been undervalued despite its importance as a record of lived experience. As cooking increasingly moves online, Katie also considers the risks of digital ephemerality and what may be lost when personal archives give way to disappearing websites and search-engine-driven recipes. Together, Vida and Katie explore how preserving food culture helps us preserve the stories, communities, and histories embedded within it.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
As more of our cultural heritage moves online, a troubling question is emerging: what happens when the things we create, share, and cherish simply disappear? In the first episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with researcher, book historian, and literary sociologist Luca Messarra, author of the Internet Archive’s Vanishing Culture report, about the growing threat of cultural loss in the digital age.
From disappearing websites and deleted social media archives to lost films, books, music, and video games, Luca explores why culture vanishes and why it matters. He explains how copyright law, corporate control of digital platforms, and the shift from ownership to licensing are making it harder for libraries, archives, and communities to preserve cultural memory. Along the way, he shares stories that illustrate both the fragility of our digital heritage and the importance of preserving it: from a favorite YouTube recipe rescued by the Wayback Machine to the role cultural artifacts play in memory and identity. The conversation wraps on a positive note, with a look toward solutions and what creators, libraries, and everyday citizens can do to help ensure culture remains accessible for generations to come.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. View the full series.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
Vanishing Culture is a special six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast, produced by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance, exploring what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it.
Hosted by musician Vida Vojić, the series features conversations with researchers, archivists, librarians, and creators working to safeguard everything from cookbooks and queer archives to African folktales and endangered languages. Together, they examine how copyright, digital platforms, and changing technologies are reshaping our collective memory, while highlighting the communities finding new ways to keep culture alive. Through personal stories and global perspectives, Vanishing Culture reveals that preservation isn’t just about protecting the past, it’s about ensuring that future generations can access, understand, and build upon our shared cultural record.
The series is inspired by the Internet Archive’s new book, Vanishing Culture, a collection of essays by scholars, artists, librarians, and preservationists examining why culture disappears in the digital age, and what can be done to save it. Together, the book and podcast offer complementary perspectives on one of the defining challenges of our time: preserving humanity’s cultural record in an increasingly fragile digital world.
Vanishing Culture #1: What We Stand to Lose with Luca Messarra
As more of our cultural heritage moves online, a troubling question is emerging: what happens when the things we create, share, and cherish simply disappear? In the first episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with researcher, book historian, and literary sociologist Luca Messarra, author of the Internet Archive’s Vanishing Culture report, about the growing threat of cultural loss in the digital age.
From disappearing websites and deleted social media archives to lost films, books, music, and video games, Luca explores why culture vanishes and why it matters. He explains how copyright law, corporate control of digital platforms, and the shift from ownership to licensing are making it harder for libraries, archives, and communities to preserve cultural memory. Along the way, he shares stories that illustrate both the fragility of our digital heritage and the importance of preserving it—from a favorite YouTube recipe rescued by the Wayback Machine to the role cultural artifacts play in memory, identity, and human dignity. The conversation concludes with a look toward solutions and what creators, libraries, and everyday citizens can do to help ensure culture remains accessible for generations to come.
Vanishing Culture #2: The Stories Hidden in Cookbooks with Katie Livingston
Why preserve a cookbook? In the second episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with Katie Livingston, a doctoral researcher at Stanford University who studies domestic culture and women’s literature. Through the lens of family cookbooks, recipe collections, and food traditions, Katie explores why everyday cultural artifacts deserve preservation and what they can teach us about history, identity, and community.
From church cookbooks and handwritten recipe notes to the rise of food blogs, Katie explains how recipes capture regional traditions, social values, and forms of knowledge that are often overlooked by traditional preservation efforts. The conversation examines how domestic culture—particularly culture created and maintained by women—has historically been undervalued despite its importance as a record of lived experience. As cooking increasingly moves online, Katie also considers the risks of digital ephemerality and what may be lost when personal archives give way to disappearing websites and search-engine-driven recipes. Together, Vida and Katie explore how preserving food culture helps us preserve the stories, communities, and histories embedded within it.
Vanishing Culture #3: Saving Queer Memory with Brooke Palmieri
RELEASE DATE: JULY 15, 2026
Queer history has often been overlooked, erased, or excluded from traditional archives. In the third episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with writer, artist, and archivist Brooke Palmieri about the vital role queer archives play in preserving memory, identity, and community. Drawing on his work with CAMP BOOKS and his research into LGBTQ+ history, Brooke explores why archives matter—not just as collections of records, but as tools for helping people understand where they come from and imagine new futures.
The conversation traces how queer communities have built their own archives in response to historical exclusion from mainstream institutions, creating spaces where stories of love, activism, creativity, and survival can be preserved and shared. Brooke reflects on the power of community-led archiving, the opportunities digital platforms create for expanding access to queer history, and the challenges posed by disappearing information, online misinformation, and unequal access to cultural heritage. Together, Vida and Brooke explore how preserving queer archives helps ensure that marginalized histories remain visible, accessible, and available to future generations.
Vanishing Culture #4: Keeping African Folktales Alive with Helen Nde & Laura Gibbs
RELEASE DATE: JULY 22, 2026
Folktales are more than stories—they are living records of culture, identity, and collective memory. In the fourth episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with writer and researcher Helen Nde, founder of Mythological Africans, and folklorist Laura Gibbs about the importance of preserving African folklore in the digital age. Together, they explore how stories help communities understand themselves, pass down knowledge across generations, and make sense of a changing world.
The conversation examines the challenges of preserving oral traditions, from the distortions introduced by colonial collectors to the loss of context when dynamic storytelling practices are reduced to written records. Helen and Laura discuss how digitization can help make folklore more accessible and discoverable, while also opening new possibilities for communities to share and reinterpret their stories online. They also reflect on the importance of trustworthy archives in an era when myths and historical narratives are increasingly used to shape political and cultural identities. Ultimately, the episode asks what it will take to ensure that these rich storytelling traditions remain available—not as relics of the past, but as living resources for future generations.
Vanishing Culture #5: A Language Worth Saving with Peter Scholing
RELEASE DATE: JULY 29, 2026
Languages can vanish just as easily as books, websites, or archives—and when they do, entire ways of understanding the world can disappear with them. In the fifth episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, host Vida Vojić speaks with Peter Scholing of Biblioteca Nacional Aruba and the Coleccion Aruba digital heritage platform about the importance of preserving Papiamento, Aruba’s creole language, and the cultural heritage it carries.
Peter shares the story of how Aruba’s libraries, archives, and cultural institutions came together to build a digital collection that now preserves hundreds of thousands of documents, photographs, newspapers, recordings, and books. The conversation explores the unique preservation challenges facing island communities, from geographic isolation and climate risks to the legacy of colonialism, which has scattered much of Aruba’s historical record across multiple countries and languages. Peter explains why expanding access to materials in Papiamento is essential for education, cultural identity, and historical understanding, and how digitization is helping unlock previously inaccessible collections. Looking ahead, he discusses the opportunities new technologies offer for smaller languages and why ensuring a vibrant digital future for Papiamento is a crucial part of preserving Aruba’s culture for generations to come.
Vanishing Culture #6: What We’ve Learned with Vida Vojić & Alice Bridgwood
RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 6, 2026
What does it mean to preserve culture in an age of disappearing websites, platform-controlled media, and fragile digital memories? In the final episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, Future Knowledge hosts Dave Hansen and Chris Freeland sit down with musician and series host Vida Vojić and producer Alice Bridgwood to reflect on the conversations, ideas, and lessons that emerged throughout the series.
Looking back on discussions about cookbooks, queer archives, African folklore, Papiamento, and more, Vida and Alice explore the common threads connecting seemingly disparate forms of cultural preservation. They reflect on how culture is shaped not only by institutions, but by communities and individuals who choose what to remember, share, and pass on. The conversation examines the challenges of living in an “age of platforms,” the risks of relying on technology and corporations to steward cultural memory, and the growing movement toward community-driven preservation efforts. Along the way, the group discusses what surprised them most, how the series changed their own habits and perspectives, and why they remain hopeful that people everywhere can play an active role in keeping culture alive. Rather than ending on a note of loss, the episode offers a hopeful reminder that culture survives when people care enough to preserve, share, and reimagine it together.
About the Future Knowledge podcast
Future Knowledge explores the intersection of technology, culture, and information policy with leading authors, scholars, and experts. From copyright and open access to AI and digital preservation, we discuss the big issues shaping knowledge and creativity in the digital age. Future Knowledge is brought to you by the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance.
