One of the great and free resources
for genealogists online is the Internet Archive. Whether I am looking at a digitized
directory, using the Wayback machine to re-capture something I “forgot” to
save, reading a long-ago published community history, etc, I probably access
this website at least once a day.
Back
in October, SFGate published a piece
about its creator, Brewster Kahle.
The
article starts out ...
Brewster Kahle was a 19-year-old
computer science student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when a
friend posed a simple, yet life-changing question: "What can you do with
your life that is worthwhile?"
Kahle came up with two
answers. The first, developing a microchip to ensure the privacy of telephone
conversations, didn't pan out. But 32 years later, Kahle is still happily
pursuing his second big idea - to create the digital-age version of the Great Library of Alexandria
His Internet Archive -
fittingly based in an old Richmond District church that
architecturally harks back to the ancient Egyptian library - is building a rich
repository of modern digital culture. It's best known for the online Wayback
Machine, which provides a searchable online museum of the Internet, archiving
more than 150 billion Web pages that have appeared since 1996.
Do
recognize that the Internet Archive is a non-profit entity. And, for once, as a Christmas present to the
world of genealogists and family historians, I just made a donation
to it. It has provided countless value
to me over the years and like many, it’s easy for me to “take advantage” of
freely available resources and forget that real money is needed to maintain
anything!
How has the Internet Archive helped
your family history research?
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