In case you missed Jill Lepore has written a superb article for the New Yorker about the Internet Archive and archiving the Web in general. The story of the Internet Archive is largely the story of its creator Brewster Kahle. If you’ve heard Kahle speak you’ve probably heard the Library of Alexandria v2.0 metaphor before. As a historian Lepore is particularly tuned to this dimension to the story of the Internet Archive:
When Kahle started the Internet Archive, in 1996, in his attic, he gave everyone working with him a book called “The Vanished Library,” about the burning of the Library of Alexandria. “The idea is to build the Library of Alexandria Two,” he told me. (The Hellenism goes further: there’s a partial backup of the Internet Archive in Alexandria, Egypt.)
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that until reading Lepore’s article I never quite understood the metaphor…but now I think I do. The Web is on fire and the Internet Archive is helping save it, one HTTP request and response at a time.
Read More: Ed Summers: Library of Alexandria v2.0