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
RELEASE DATE: JULY 8, 2026
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.
As America celebrates its Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary) this year, explore a curated list of materials preserved at the Internet Archive documenting the nation’s founding, the Declaration of Independence, past ephemera created for the nation’s anniversaries, and new efforts to capture and preserve the materials published by democracies.
Democracy’s Library
The Internet Archive’s Democracy’s Library project helps preserve critical information and publications produced by federal, state, provincial, and municipal governments, and makes them available for users to access and to anyone wanting to build new services on these public documents. Learn more about Democracy’s Library.
Declaration of Independence
The National Archives of the United States lists three documents as the “Founding Documents”: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Preamble to the Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence was ratified on July 4, 1776, creating a historical date that Americans observe every year as “Independence Day.” Internet Archive preserves many materials related to the Declaration including a souvenir copy, a full reading of the text from LibriVox, and more educational and informative items.
The Declaration of Independence on the Wayback Machine
Internet Archive has been archiving the National Archives and Records Administration website since 1997. Compare the earliest capture (June 6, 1997) of the page displaying the Declaration of Independence via the Wayback Machine to a more recent capture (June 16, 2026). These preserved web pages allow Americans and other observers to trace the ways that presentation of the document has changed online over nearly 30 years.
How has America celebrated past ‘-Ennial’ anniversaries
Since its founding America has always told stories about itself. These stories see hotspots every 50 years during the various ‘-ennial’ anniversaries dating back to 1826. Below is a selection of materials highlighting each past anniversary. To explore more, check out the broader collections linked within the relevant sections.
Semi-centennial (1826)
On its first 50-year anniversary, America still was in living memory of the American Revolution and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Almost symbolically, two titans of that moment would pass on that very day: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was instrumental in drafting the original Declaration while Adams was one of the 56 signatories. Each man served as President during the earliest years of the United States’ history.
The Semi-Centennial was commonly referred to as the American Jubilee at the time. The document below is a printed version of a speech given by Reverend William B. Johnson in 1826:
The speech traces a providential history of America from European settlement through the Revolution and into the nation’s first fifty years, reflecting the patriotic and deeply religious tone common to many Jubilee observances. It offers a snapshot of how Americans in 1826 understood their country’s past and envisioned its future.
Centennial (1876)
Following the American Civil War, the late 1860s and 1870s saw the passage of the Civil War Amendments (XIII, XIV, XV) that altered the civic order of the nation. As the 100th anniversary came about, the United States hosted the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Explore more from this moment in our collections.
1872 Map from Caldwell’s Illustrated Combination Centennial Atlas Of Beaver County, Pennsylvania. by J.A. Caldwell (1876).
This map of the United States, published by cartographer J.A. Caldwell around the time of the nation’s Centennial celebrations in 1876, reflects how Americans visualized their country at its 100th anniversary. As a Centennial-era artifact, it captures both the geographic reach of the United States and the national growth, infrastructure, and westward development in the decades following the Civil War.
This 1876 recipe booklet from the collections of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives illustrates how Centennial-era businesses tied themselves to the celebration of American progress and industry. The booklet offers a glimpse into everyday domestic life during the Centennial year, while also demonstrating how companies used cookbooks as an early form of marketing to reach households across the country.
Sesquicentennial (1926)
Part of the Roaring Twenties, the 150th Anniversary of the United States was informed by the cultural and technological expansion of American society. Once again coinciding with an Exposition, this celebration saw a greater focus on the contentious topic of immigration and technological modernity. Explore more from this moment in our collections.
One of the official musical works of Philadelphia’s 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition, John Philip Sousa’s Sesquicentennial Exposition March transformed the anniversary of American independence into sound. Written by the nation’s most famous bandleader, the march reflects the exposition’s blend of historical commemoration, civic pride, and large-scale public celebration. This recording comes from the United States Marine Band.
Created for the 1926 National Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, this booklet explained the United States Public Health Service’s responsibilities through photographs and descriptions of medical practices. The booklet reflects a period of heightened concern over immigration and public health in the United States, coming just two years after the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, when medical screening and exclusion of immigrants were central features of federal immigration policy.
Created for visitors to the Bell Telephone System exhibit at Philadelphia’s 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition, this booklet celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the telephone through a first-person narrative spoken by the technology itself.
Bicentennial (1976)
The 200th anniversary of the Declaration’s signing coincided with an all-out blitz of media and governmental efforts to commemorate the occasion. From Congressional Committees, to civic engagement, and the leveraging of Hollywood Stars, the 200th anniversary was everywhere. Explore more from this moment in our collections.
Produced during the 1976 United States Bicentennial celebrations, this television advertisement features John Wayne promoting U.S. Savings Bonds as a way for Americans to participate in the nation’s future while commemorating its 200th anniversary.
This Amtrak brochure promoted a special Bicentennial-era excursion ticket that allowed travelers to visit cities closely associated with the American Revolution and the nation’s founding. By combining discounted rail travel with visits to historic landmarks, the brochure demonstrates how the 1976 Bicentennial transformed heritage tourism into a national pastime.
Produced as part of the Bicentennial celebration, New Spirit for ’76 demonstrates how organizers and promoters sought to frame the nation’s 200th anniversary as a moment of reflection, optimism, and shared identity.
Governments produce an abundance of information and put that information in the public domain, but often the public can’t easily find or access it. The Internet Archive’s Democracy’s Library project is helping by preserving critical information and publications produced by governments: federal, state, provincial, and municipal– and making them available to anyone wanting to build new services on them.
Since the program’s launch in 2022, the Internet Archive has built on this already strong foundation by becoming a designated Federal Depository Library—joining 1,100+ peer libraries—and by utilizing Democracy’s Library as a means to connect to libraries, archives, and patrons with purpose.
Although it would be convenient to tie the practice of preserving government information to the messy birth of the United States, grounded as it was in principles around liberty and democratic process, we lack pithy quotes from the founders on this exact topic. What we do see is recognition in the very first Congress that citizens needed access to documentation of the business of their government.
In 1789, the House of Representatives provided for the printing and distribution of the laws and proceedings of the new Congress. From this modest beginning, the US Government rapidly rose to become the largest publisher in the world. Over the following century, a series of legislative milestones followed: the establishment of the Government Printing Office in 1860, and the Government Printing Act of 1895, which centralized GPO’s authority as the primary channel for distributing the federal record.
Taken together, these efforts reflect a consistent, if imperfectly realized, principle: that government information belongs to the people and that information should be freely distributed to its citizens for their own use. It is important to note that libraries were identified as the natural and primary means of getting that information into the hands of citizens.
Who are the audiences for government information?
First and foremost, government itself; it is essential that law and policy makers understand prior law and policy. With an abundance of outputs, governments are not always the best record keepers and frequently turn to libraries to find appropriate documentation.
Second, we see serious researchers (including journalists) as those that rely on access to government information. These users seek authoritative sources and want assurances around provenance and reliable sources; libraries provide that authority.
Third, we see curious and motivated citizens. Users in this category include genealogists but can also include people like property owners seeking to understand current or prior ordinances in their jurisdiction, or people seeking to understand the history of their house or neighborhood.
Finally, an emerging category of user is machines; research methods mediated and assisted by computers have been on the rise for some time, but with the advent of LLMs and generative AI tools, a human assisted by a machine is emerging as a distinctive category of user. Looking across these categories, we can assert that government information not only belongs to everyone, but it is for everyone.
Why is Democracy’s Library important today?
Democracy’s Library is more than just collections – it is also a movement to bring people together in common cause, to take action, and to build momentum around increasing access. The Information Stewardship Forum, hosted by the Internet Archive in March, was one such gathering and we look forward to more in the future.
One of the themes that emerged from the Information Stewardship Forum is that, especially in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, public access to government information cannot be left to chance. As the United States marks 250 years, Democracy’s Library exists to make sure it isn’t. Please join us.
Let us know how we can help you by collaborating to digitize and preserve collections, to build services on existing collections, and to support each other in areas of mutual interest. I welcome your emails at any time. I will be attending GODORT meetings at the June 2026 American Library Association meeting in Chicago, and you can find me there, as well as at the CNI meeting in December in Washington DC, or at our headquarters in San Francisco anytime you are in town.
For nearly 30 years, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has helped preserve the public record.
It has captured more than 1 trillion web pages, documented history in real time, and ensured that journalists, researchers, historians, librarians, and the public can continue to access reporting long after stories are published. From breaking news and investigative journalism to local reporting and public statements, the Wayback Machine has become essential infrastructure for the public’s ability to preserve online news and culture.
Now, that preservation work is under threat.
As reported by Nieman Lab and WIRED, some publishers are blocking the Wayback Machine from preserving their reporting. As a result, some of the most important journalism being produced today may no longer be independently archived for future generations. For details on the publisher blocking, check out our FAQ: Publishers Blocking the Wayback Machine.
In response to these blocks, Fight for the Future has launched an open lettercalling on major media organizations to work with the Internet Archive to ensure the news remains preserved and accessible in the Wayback Machine.
The letter argues that preserving journalism is not only about access today, but about protecting the historical record itself:
“The freedom of journalists isn’t only the freedom to write, it’s also the freedom to have your work read and remembered for generations to come.”
At a moment when misinformation spreads rapidly, links disappear, websites change, and pressure to alter or erase reporting continues to grow, independent web preservation matters more than ever. The Wayback Machine helps make journalism more resilient by ensuring published reporting can still be referenced, verified, and studied years later.
The campaign also highlights a growing contradiction: while many publishers rely on the Wayback Machine for reporting, research, and fact-checking, some are simultaneously preventing their own journalism from being preserved.
The Internet Archive has long worked collaboratively with publishers and respects requests around access and preservation. The Wayback Machine has been designed for preservation: helping ensure that the historical record of the web is not lost.
If you believe journalism should remain accessible to historians, researchers, educators, and future generations, we encourage you to add your name to the letter.
Digitization project in progress! Signage at the NOAA Library.
This is the story of two libraries supporting one another to ensure physical preservation and broad access to great research collections.
The first is the NOAA Library, an institution that was established in the early 1970s, building on the inheritance of previous US Federal agency libraries, including those of the National Weather Service, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The NOAA Library primarily serves the employees and affiliates that have full access to the library’s e-resources and physical holdings. Members of the public can access NOAA publications through the NOAA Institutional Repository or the NOAA Library’s digitized holdings.
The second is the Internet Archive. Having recently celebrated its 30th birthday, the Internet Archive has strong capabilities in digitizing materials at scale as well as safeguarding physical materials in physical archives.
Both libraries are part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). NOAA received the honor of being named the FDLP Library of the year in 1999, while the Internet Archive is the new to the network, having joined in 2025. NOAA’s current FDLP status as a digital access partner made connecting with the Internet Archive a natural decision.
The NOAA Library and the Internet Archive have been working together collaboratively since 2022 when NOAA first donated materials they no longer deemed to be in scope as per the Library’s collection development policy. This collection, however, fell into the Internet Archive’s mission to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge by acquiring, digitizing, and hosting materials just like this. Since that time, the two libraries have continued to collaborate, sharing a goal and vision of making these materials more available. NOAA collections fit nicely into the Internet Archive’s Democracy’s Library, which seeks to give broad access to government publications, including those from US Federal agencies and other parts of government.
Liz Rosenberg, who leads the physical donation program, describes the relationship this way. “A lot of folks do not know that we preserve physical materials. So when NOAA reached out to explore this kind of collaboration we were so grateful for the opportunity to help preserve valuable resources from their collections. Our partnership has blossomed over years of collaboration with wonderful NOAA librarians, and we are excited to be bringing broader digital access to their unique collections.”
Ben Hope, director of the NOAA Library also values the partnership. “Libraries are at their best when they combine stewardship with access,” says Hope. “Our partnership with the Internet Archive ensures that NOAA’s scientific and historical collections are not only preserved for future generations, but also made more discoverable and accessible to researchers, educators, and the public worldwide. Together, we are extending the reach and impact of NOAA’s knowledge far beyond the walls of any single library.”
Collections boxed up on site.The Internet Archive “Away Team” and NOAA collaborators celebrate.Loading collections onto the truck.
Please check out the digital collections as we are collaboratively building. The NOAA collections contain a wealth of resources around weather, fisheries, deep sea exploration and more! https://archive.org/details/noaa
If you are interested in donating materials or know of other potential collaborations, please contact us.
As publishers block the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for unfounded concerns over AI scraping, hundreds of journalists have signed a public letter supporting the Wayback Machine and the importance of preserving the online historical record. Below, Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, shares a message of thanks to the journalism community for standing up for web preservation, accountability, and access to the public record.
Journalists who would like to add their names can sign the letter here, and members of the public can sign the broader support letter here.
Dear colleagues,
On behalf of all of us at the Internet Archive, I want to thank you.
For thirty years, the Wayback Machine has worked in the background, preserving more than 1 trillion web pages so that reporting doesn’t simply vanish with the next site redesign or corporate decision. Today, more than 100 news articles every month reference, cite, or rely on material preserved by the Wayback Machine to verify claims, recover deleted information, or provide historical context.
Where previous generations could walk into a newsroom morgue or a local library archive, today’s journalists increasingly rely on digital preservation to trace accountability and verify claims that might otherwise be lost. When a source disappears, when a statement is rewritten, when a page is taken down, the ability to recover that record is not a luxury.
The stakes are not hypothetical. A Pew Research Center study from 2024 found that 38% of webpages from a decade ago are no longer accessible, and about 25% of pages sampled across the decade have disappeared entirely. But that’s not the whole story. New analysis by Internet Archive data scientist Sawood Alam found that the Wayback Machine has rescued roughly 15% of those otherwise lost pages, preserving reporting and historical evidence that would simply no longer exist online.
We are especially grateful that you recognized the care with which we approach this work. We are your partners in preservation. We build systems designed for people, not bulk extraction; we monitor our services to manage abusive access; and we actively collaborate with publishers and newsrooms to ensure their work is preserved with integrity.
Importantly, recent reporting has also underscored a key reality of this debate. As journalist Andrew Deck reported in Marketplace Tech, many publishers blocking the Wayback Machine appear to be acting preemptively out of concern over AI scraping rather than evidence of misuse. “None of the publishers were able to point to a particular AI company or other kinds of direct evidence that their content had already been scraped by the Wayback Machine,” Deck wrote.
At a time when the pressures on journalism are mounting—from economic shifts to the rapid evolution of AI—your support sends a clear message: preserving the public record is not optional. It is essential infrastructure for a functioning democracy.
We remain committed to the important task of preserving the web. And we are deeply encouraged to know that so many of you stand with us in defending that work.
With gratitude,
Mark Graham Director, Wayback Machine Internet Archive
Before feeds, before algorithms, there was the Class of 1996: websites & organizations founded (or expanded) in 1996, like the Internet Archive.
On the occasion of the Internet Archive’s 30th anniversary, we’re opening the internet’s yearbook to celebrate the sites, services & scrappy experiments that helped shape the web as we know it. From class leaders like Center for Democracy and Technology to cultural icons like The Onion to the archivists making sure none of it disappears, this is a reunion worth attending.
Some are still thriving. Some have changed beyond recognition. Some are already gone. All of them remind us: the early web wasn’t just built, it was lived in.
THE MORE YOU KNOW: Did you know that some publishers are blocking the Wayback Machine from archiving their sites, putting decades of reporting and cultural history at risk of disappearing from the public record? If the web’s past matters — and the Class of 1996 reminds us that it does — now is the time to speak up. Add your name to the petition calling on publishers to stop blocking the Wayback Machine and help ensure the internet’s history remains accessible for future generations.
Class of 1996
Class President — Center for Democracy and Technology
The Center for Democracy and Technology didn’t just show up—they helped write the rules of the internet. And 30 years later, they’re still fighting to keep it open.
