As the Grateful Dead are honored at the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast on Sunday (airing December 22 at 8:30pm ET on CBS & streaming), we’re celebrating their legacy with a look at the top ten most popular recordings in the Internet Archive’s Grateful Dead collection. Home to over 17,000 live recordings spanning decades of performances, this collection reflects the band’s rich history, their loyal taper community, and the boundless creativity of their legendary shows. From mesmerizing jams to unforgettable setlists, these recordings represent the enduring magic of the Dead—and the timeless connection between the band and their fans. Listen in and rediscover the music that has kept the Grateful Dead’s spirit alive for generations:
Top Ten Grateful Dead Live Recordings at the Internet Archive
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the legendary concert at Barton Hall, Cornell University, on May 8, 1977 appears twice on the list. The collection often features multiple recordings of the same show by different tapers from different vantage points in the crowd. A note on #10 indicates that recording was made “10 Feet From Stage=Great Instrement [sic] Pickup.”
In 2024, the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance brought together an array of authors, scholars and thought leaders to explore critical issues at the intersection of technology, culture and information science. From the labor implications of artificial intelligence in Joanne McNeil’s Wrong Way to the evolving role of fair use in Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi’s landmark publication, Reclaiming Fair Use, these conversations covered topics shaping our information-enabled future. Here are highlights from the year’s events, offering session recordings for anyone eager to revisit—or discover for the first time—the compelling ideas shared by these influential voices.
February 29: Wrong Way
Author Joanne McNeil in conversation with author Sarah Jaffe.
McNeil & Jaffe discuss the labor implications of artificial intelligence for our first book talk about a work of fiction.
For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.
Author and game designer Jordan Mechner in conversation with historian Chris Kohler.
Jordan Mechner (creator of “Prince of Persia”) shares his story as a pioneer in the fast-growing video game industry from the 1980s to today, and how his family’s back story as refugees from war-torn Europe led to his own multifaceted 4-decade creative career. Interweaving of past and present, family transmission, exile and renewal are at the heart of his award-winning graphic novel “Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family.”
Authors Andrea I. Copland and Kathleen DeLaurenti in conversation with musician and educator Kyoko Kitamura, facilitated by music librarian Matthew Vest.
Based on coursework developed at the Peabody Conservatory, Unlocking the Digital Age: The Musician’s Guide to Research, Copyright, and Publishing by Andrea I. Copland and Kathleen DeLaurenti serves as a crucial resource for early career musicians navigating the complexities of the digital era. This guide bridges the gap between creative practice and scholarly research, empowering musicians to confidently share and protect their work as they expand their performing lives beyond the concert stage as citizen artists. It offers a plain language resource that helps early career musicians see where creative practice and creative research intersect and how to traverse information systems to share their work. As professional musicians and researchers, the authors’ experiences on stage and in academia makes this guide an indispensable tool for musicians aiming to thrive in the digital landscape.
Authors Aram Sinnreich & Jesse Gilbert in conversation with tech scholar Laura Denardis.
In The Secret Life of Data, Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The authors build on this basic premise: no matter what form data takes, and what purpose we think it’s being used for, data will always have a secret life. How this data will be used, by other people in other times and places, has profound implications for every aspect of our lives—from our intimate relationships to our professional lives to our political systems.
Author Dan Sinykin in conversation with humanities scholar Ted Underwood.
Dan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry’s daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published. Sinykin examines four different sectors of the publishing industry: mass-market books by brand-name authors like Danielle Steel; trade publishers that encouraged genre elements in literary fiction; nonprofits such as Graywolf that aspired to protect literature from market pressures; and the distinctive niche of employee-owned W. W. Norton. He emphasizes how women and people of color navigated shifts in publishing, arguing that writers such as Toni Morrison allegorized their experiences in their fiction.
Author Nathan Schneider in conversation with author Lilly Irani.
When was the last time you participated in an election for a Facebook group or sat on a jury for a dispute in a subreddit? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “benevolent dictators for life.” In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities’ democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before.
Authors & copyright scholars Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi in conversation with Dave Hansen, executive director of Authors Alliance.
In the increasingly complex and combative arena of copyright in the digital age, record companies sue college students over peer-to-peer music sharing, YouTube removes home movies because of a song playing in the background, and filmmakers are denied a distribution deal when a permissions i proves undottable. Analyzing the dampening effect that copyright law can have on scholarship and creativity, Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi urge us to embrace in response a principle embedded in copyright law itself—fair use.
Author Barbara McQuade in conversation with Sarah Lamdan of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation—the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth—and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It’s endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility.
In Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it.
Author James Boyle in conversation with Kate Darling of the MIT Media Lab.
Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. But is ChatGPT conscious? Or is it merely engaging in sophisticated mimicry? And what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible? In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to “the line” we believe separates our species from the rest of the world, but also separates “persons” with legal rights from objects.
Authors Luca Messarra, Chris Freeland and Katie Livingston in a roundtable discussion.
In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history. When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal—whether by design or by attack—our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.
We invite filmmakers and artists of all skill levels to celebrate Public Domain Day on January 22, 2025, by creating and uploading 2–3 minute short films to the Internet Archive!
This contest offers a chance to explore and reimagine the creative treasures entering the public domain, including works from 1929—classic literature, silent films, music, and art. Participants are encouraged to use materials from the Internet Archive’s collections to craft unique films that breathe new life into these cultural gems.
Top entries will be awarded prizes up to $1,500, with winners announced during our in-person Public Domain Day Celebration on January 22, 2025, at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco. All submissions will be featured in a special Public Domain Day Collection on archive.org and highlighted in a January 2025 blog post.
Join us in this creative celebration of cultural heritage and timeless art!
Here are a few examples of some of the materials that will become public domain on January 1, 2025:
Periodicals!Black Thursday – October 24, 1929: The stock market experienced a massive drop, with panic selling beginning. Black Monday – October 28, 1929: The market fell even more sharply, accelerating the crisis. Black Tuesday – October 29, 1929: The Great Depression begins.
Make a 2–3 minute movie using at least one work published in 1929 that will become Public Domain on January 1, 2025. This could be a poem, book, film, musical composition, painting, photograph or any other work that will become Public Domain next year. The more different PD materials you use, the better!
Note: If you have a resource from 1929 that is not available on archive.org, you may upload it and then use it in your submission. (Here is how to do that).
Your submission must have a soundtrack. It can be your own voiceover or performance of a public domain musical composition, or you may use public domain or CC0 sound recordings from sources like Openverse and the Free Music Archive.
Note: Sound recordings have special status under Copyright Law, so it’s important to note that while musical compositions from 1929 will be entering the public domain, the sound recordings of those works are not. Sound recordings published in 1924 will enter the public domain.
Mix and Mash content however you like, but note that ALL of your sources must be from the public domain. They do not all have to be from 1929. Remember, U.S. government works are public domain no matter when they are published. So feel free to use those NASA images! You may include your own original work if you put a CC0 license on it.
Add a personal touch, make it yours!
Keep the videos light hearted and fun! (It is a celebration after all!)
Submission Deadline
All submissions must be in by Midnight, January 17, 2025 (PST)
Link all your sourced materials from 1929 in the upload description
Prizes
1st prize: $1500
2nd prize: $1000
3rd prize: $500
Judges will be looking for videos that are fun, interesting and use public domain materials, especially those from 1929. They will be shown at the in-person Public Domain Day party in San Francisco and should highlight the value of having cultural materials that can be reused, remixed, and re-contextualized for a new day. Winners’ pieces will be purchased with the prize money, and viewable on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons license.
Amir Saber Esfahani (Director of Special Arts Projects, Internet Archive)
Rick Prelinger (Board Member, Internet Archive, Founder, Prelinger Archives)
BZ Petroff (Director of Admin & HR, Internet Archive)
The Grateful Dead Collection, part of the Live Music Archive, features more than 17,000 concert recordings spanning decades of the band’s live shows. The collection is a result of the Grateful Dead’s longstanding collaboration with their fans and the taper community, supporting non-commercial recording and sharing of music taped at their shows, creating an unparalleled archive of live music.
What’s the most popular Grateful Dead recording in the collection? No surprise to Dead fans, the legendary concert at Barton Hall, Cornell University, on May 8, 1977, has the most views. Listen below or here.
Whether you’re reliving a classic show or discovering their music for the first time, explore the Grateful Dead Collection to experience the sound and spirit of a band that continues to inspire. 🌹💀
While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit’s opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review. We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers (AAP) agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers’ requests.
We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.
Download Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record
In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history.
The rise of streaming platforms and temporary licensing agreements means that sound recordings, books, films, and other cultural artifacts that used to be owned in physical form, are now at risk—in digital form—of disappearing from public view without ever being archived.
When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal—whether by design or by attack—our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.
Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record (download) aims to raise awareness of these growing issues. The report details recent instances of cultural loss, highlights the underlying causes, and emphasizes the critical role that public-serving libraries and archives must play in preserving these materials for future generations. By empowering libraries and archives legally, culturally, and financially, we can safeguard the public’s ability to maintain access to our cultural history and our digital future.
Download Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record
In recovering from recent cyberattacks on October 9, the Internet Archive has resumed the Wayback Machine (starting October 13) and Archive-It (October 17), and as of today (October 21), has begun offering provisional availability of archive.org in a read-only manner. Features like uploading, borrowing, reviewing items, interlibrary loan, and other services are not yet available.
Please note that these services will have limited availability as we continue maintenance.
Hackers disclosed archive.org email and encrypted passwords to a transparency website, and also sent emails to patrons by exploiting a 3rd party helpdesk system.
The safety and integrity of the Internet Archive’s data and patrons remain our top priorities. As the security incident is analyzed and contained by our team, we are relaunching services as defenses are strengthened. These efforts are focused on reinforcing firewall systems and further protecting the data stores.
We appreciate your patience and support as we work through these challenges. For ongoing updates, please follow our blog and official social media channels on X/Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
Last month, the UBL announced that it will deselect an extensive collection of foreign dissertations. We are happy to report now that The Internet Archive will be taking over this collection.
The dissertations were originally part of an exchange programme between (mostly European) universities until the year 2004 but were never catalogued on arrival. As Leiden University Libraries has limited space for growth in its stacks, it decided to deselect these dissertations, so that 3.2 km could be freed up for new acquisitions. The universities where these dissertations originally were defended informed UBL that they still have the dissertations and were not interested in receiving back the Leiden copy. The Internet Archive will now take over this collection from the UBL, and will take care of its future preservation and access. The UBL is pleased that The Internet Archive is able to give this collection of foreign dissertations a second life.
In a world where digital access to knowledge is increasingly vital, the island nation of Aruba has taken bold steps to ensure its cultural heritage is preserved and accessible for generations to come. We are thrilled to announce that Aruba will be honored with the 2024 Internet Archive Hero Award at our annual celebration on October 23 in San Francisco and online.
The Internet Archive Hero Award is presented annually to individuals, organizations, or nations that have shown exceptional leadership in expanding access to knowledge and supporting the digital preservation of cultural and historical materials. Recipients of the award exemplify the values of openness, accessibility, and collaboration that are essential to a free and informed global society. Previous recipients have included librarian and copyright expert Michelle Wu, public access advocate Carl Malamud, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and the Grateful Dead.
Aruba’s Commitment to Preservation and Access
Aruba’s commitment to preserving its history and culture through digital initiatives has been nothing short of visionary. Earlier this year, the nation launched Coleccion Aruba, a digital heritage portal that provides free global access to its historical materials and cultural treasures. The initiative ensures that Aruba’s rich history—its documents, artifacts, and stories—are accessible to the world, helping to safeguard its national identity in the digital age. You can learn more about the launch of this groundbreaking collection here.
From left: Mrs. Astrid Britten, Director of the National Library Aruba; Mr. Raymond Hernandez, Director National Archives of Aruba; and Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive, at the signing of the Statement Protecting Digital Rights of Memory Institutions, April 9, 2024.
In another historic first, Aruba became the first country to officially endorse the Statement Protecting Digital Rights of Memory Institutions, recognizing the importance of libraries, archives, and museums in preserving digital cultural heritage. By supporting this statement, Aruba set a powerful precedent for nations worldwide to protect the digital rights of libraries and memory institutions. You can read more about Aruba’s leadership in this area here.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, praised Aruba’s commitment to the digital preservation of cultural heritage, describing the nation’s efforts as “a beacon of hope in the global movement to safeguard history in the digital era.” In his reflections on Aruba’s leadership, Brewster wrote that “Aruba’s bold support of library digital rights shows what is possible when nations value not just their own history, but the global importance of memory institutions. Their commitment sends a strong message: culture, knowledge, and history belong to everyone.”
What the Award Means for Aruba
Reflecting on the award, the Minister of Finance and Culture, Mrs. Xiomara Maduro remarked, “We thank Internet Archive for this great honor of recognizing Aruba’s hard work and efforts in preserving and making our cultural heritage accessible through the Coleccion Aruba online platform. This award is a significant encouragement to continue our work in safeguarding our culture and history. Thank you for supporting our efforts to keep our rich cultural heritage alive and accessible for our future generations.”
Mrs. Astrid Britten, Director of the National Library Aruba: “We are beyond excited and deeply honored by this recognition from the Internet Archive. What began in 2018 with Mr. Peter Scholing at the National Library of Aruba, and our partnership with the Internet Archive, has grown into something truly remarkable. The launch of Coleccion Aruba earlier this year marks a significant milestone in our journey, and it’s inspiring to see over 150,000 digital items—more than the number of inhabitants on our island—shared globally. The involvement of the National Archives of Aruba (under the leadership of Mr. Raymond Hernandez and Mr. Edric Croes), UNOCA (Ms. Ray-Anne Hernandez), and other key partners since 2022 has strengthened our mission to ensure that Aruba’s cultural treasures are preserved and accessible, not only for our own people but for audiences far beyond our shores. Aruba’s dedication to preserving digital history and ensuring access to knowledge for all has set a new benchmark for collaboration, through innovation and partnership. This acknowledges Aruba’s impact in digital preservation.”
Mr. Raymond Hernandez, Director National Archives of Aruba: “On behalf of Coleccion Aruba, the National Archives of Aruba is deeply honored to receive the Internet Archive Hero Award. While we were never in pursuit of any awards, this recognition is a profound encouragement for the work we have been doing to preserve and share Aruba’s rich cultural heritage. This together with all of our partners as well. As a small island in the Caribbean with limited resources, our mission to make our national archives accessible to all has been driven by the belief that open access to knowledge is essential for our community and beyond. With the support of the Internet Archive, we are inspired to continue on this path and hope to serve as a model for other small island states in development, especially in the Caribbean. This award reinforces our commitment to creating a future where information is freely accessible to all, and we are sincerely grateful for this support.”
Mrs. Ray-anne Hernandez, Managing Director UNOCA (A funding agency that cofinances Art & Cultural Projects in Aruba): “We are incredibly honored and grateful to receive the Hero Award from the Internet Archive. This recognition celebrates not only our commitment to preserving and sharing Aruba’s rich history and cultural heritage but also the invaluable collaboration with the founding partners of Coleccion Aruba: the Library of Aruba and the National Archives of Aruba. Together, we have worked passionately to make our collective history accessible to the world, and this achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the support and contributions of our many partners, both big and small. This award inspires us to continue our work with even more dedication, striving to conserve and promote Aruba’s national heritage for future generations. We are driven by our shared passion for culture and history, and we look forward to further collaborations that will continue to enrich our community and beyond. Thank you again for this prestigious recognition.”
Join Us in Celebrating
Aruba will officially receive the 2024 Internet Archive Hero Award at the Internet Archive’s annual celebration on October 23, 2024, in San Francisco. The event, themed “Escaping the Memory Hole,” will focus on the role of libraries and archives in preserving cultural history in the face of vanishing media. We invite you to join Aruba’s representatives and the institutions behind Coleccion Aruba for this special occasion as we celebrate this remarkable achievement and the global importance of preserving knowledge. Register now for the virtual celebration.
