Online Business Howto - Computers > Internet > History

Archive-It.org - A subscription service from the Internet Archive, which allows institutions to build, manage and search their own web archive. Includes the sites of universities, libraries, and special interest collections of websites.

DevArchives - Contains archives of FAQs, mailing lists, and newsgroups all related to developer/programming/IT. Free.

The European Archive - Digital library of cultural artifacts in digital form. The collection includes public information films, recordings and Web harvest of political related and government websites.

Ghost Sites - Long running online "museum" provides screenshots of defunct sites.

Google Groups - Searchable archive of more than 700 million Usenet postings from a period of more than 20 years.

The Internet Archive - Nonprofit organisation established to preserve Web sites by taking regular "snapshots". The Wayback Machine provides links to older versions of a webpage. There are special collections, for example on Web pioneers.

MINERVA: Mapping the INternet Electronic Resources Virtual Archive - Library of Congress Web Archiving Project aims to collect and preserve Web sites useful in serving the current or future informational needs of Congress and researchers.

NewsletterArchive.org - Aims to archive and make available to the public all email newsletters and electronic mailing lists. It will rely on user contributions for its content.

Pandora Archive - Australia's Web archive, established initially by the National Library of Australia, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations.

Programming and Software Development List Archives - Searchable online archives of mailing list discussions containing thousands of lists with millions of messages, with spam filters.

Textfiles - Contains information gathered from BBS's in the early days of the Internet.

UK Web Archiving Consortium - Creating an archive of culturally significant UK websites.

2004 U.S. Federal Agency Web Harvest - A harvest of Federal Agency public web sites as they existed prior to January 20, 2005.

Web Design Timeline - Ten years of web design in an archive.

First Monday: Internet Time and the Reliability of Search Engines - Journal article by Paul Wouters, Iina Hellsten, and Loet Leydesdorff. Examines the consequences and implications of internet search engines continuously reconstructing the past by updating their indices. (October 4, 2004)

The Register: Archive.org Suffers Fahrenheit 911 Memory Loss - Opinion piece by Ashlee Vance about how archive.org doesn't permanently save material the way most people believe it does. (July 9, 2004)

The Register: Britain's Web Presence to be Saved - Announcement of the creation of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC). (June 24, 2004)

The Register: The Web as Historical Record - Essay by Peter Abrahams pointing out "one of the weaknesses of most search engines and the Web itself: you cannot sort by date." (May 4, 2004)

The Register: Google, the Only Archive We'll Ever Need? - Opinion piece by Andrew Orlowski. Points out that Google can't always index, retrieve and/or sort everything in useful ways, but its supporters are overlooking these major drawbacks to using it as an archive. (September 15, 2003)

Searchenginewatch.com - It's Tough to Get a Good Date with a Search Engine - Article by Gary Price and Genie Tyburski. Explores the question of "what is a date on the web?" and notes that a searcher may be misled by the results of searches restricted by date. (June 5, 2002)