thearchivist.funThe Library of Congress begins collecting the Web
The Library of Congress began its web-archiving program in 2000 to preserve selected born-digital material.
Context and provenance
The Library of Congress dates its Web Archiving Program to 2000. The program collects online material so researchers can investigate resources that might otherwise change or disappear. This involves selection: subject specialists identify material within the Library's collecting scope rather than promising to save every page on the internet. Captured web resources are stored in archival containers, including WARC and, for some older material, ARC files. The resulting collection is an interpretation of a changing medium as well as a technical copy. Understanding what was selected, when it was captured, and what the capture can reproduce is part of using it responsibly as evidence.
Why it matters
Editorial perspective: A public archive is built through choices. Saving a page does not remove the need to ask whose voices were included, which interactions were lost, and how an archived version differs from a person's original experience.