No, not “that” kind of history; we all can grab the quick lowdown on how the “interwebs” came to be what it is in this day and age from many sites such as Wikipedia.
The British Library is offering the world something far more substantial: storing an archive of significant websites for everyone. Starting from sites back in 2004, the Library has kept over 6000 websites for reference.
Well, not exactly the kind of records that people would want to access for artistic inspiration. Most of the old websites used elements such as frames, marquees, embedded Midi files, and dozens of outdated HTML and Java features. Well, that’s the basic idea anyway.
And while it is technically feasible to actually do an archive of important websites over half a decade ago, the same is not applicable for the sheer number of websites we have this year. This 2010, there are millions of websites hosted in the UK alone. Another major restriction aside from sheer volume is the fact that websites are now copyrighted and the British Library needs a new legislation in order to continue their work.
This effort is being pursued in order to avoid the possibility that people in the future would be looking back at our society and would have no idea about the real history of time due to the fact that all the data has been lost when sites were updated to newer versions. It’s a large undertaking, and it is impressive that they have taken it upon themselves to pursue it.
The archive at the library is pretty large, storing plenty of important artistic and academy sites. Users can even compare the visual evolution of websites from their earlier layouts to what they look like now in a timeline scrollbar.
Read more about the British Library at Times Online UK.
