Why is the Library of Congress collecting and creating an archive of Web sites? The Library of Congress and libraries and archives around the world are interested in collecting and preserving the Web because an ever-increasing amount of the world’s cultural and intellectual output is created in digital formats and does not exist in any physical form. Creating an archive of Web sites supports the goals of the Library’s Digital Strategic Plan, announced in March 2003, which focuses on the collection and management of digital content.
How does the Library’s Web Archiving program relate to the National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP)? In 2004 the Library formed the Web Archiving team to support the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program’s (NDIIPP) strategic goal to manage and sustain at-risk digital content. The team’s focus has been on technologies, tools, and infrastructure to assist Library staff in building born-digital Web collections. In the Library’s role as administrator of NDIIPP, the Web Archiving team also collaborates on two NDIIPP projects: The Web-at-Risk: A Distributed Approach to Preserving Our Nation’s Political Cultural Heritage, led by the California Digital Library, and The ECHO DEPository, led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
How large is the Library’s archive? As of May 2009, the Library has collected almost 100 terabytes of data.
What kinds of Web sites does the Library archive? Library of Congress recommending officers, or curators, select a variety of Web sites to archive, depending on the theme of the collection activity. The Library’s MINERVA project was the initial pilot project to archive web sites. Event-based or thematic collections publicly available through the Library of Congress Web Archives Web site include Election 2002, September 11, Election 2004, and the 107th Congress Web archive. Categories of sites archived include, but are not limited to: United States government (federal, state, district, local), foreign government, candidates for political office, political commentary, political party, media, religious organizations, support groups, tributes and memorials, advocacy groups, educational and research institutions, creative expressions (cartoons, poetry, etc.), and blogs.
Do you have published selection guidelines? A collections policy statement and other internal documents demonstrate current policies about selection of electronic resources. In addition, selection criteria are developed for each collection. Our publicly accessible Web archives have collection-specific selection criteria available for review and are available on the Library of Congress Web Archives Web site.
Are other libraries and organizations doing similar work? Since 1996 the Internet Archive has archived 40 billion web pages. The Library of Congress contracts with the Internet Archive for many of its Web archive projects. U.S. federal government agencies, including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Government Printing Office, collect official Web content from the U.S. government. NARA documented federal agencies' presence on the World Wide Web at the time that the presidential administration term ended in early 2005. The Library of Congress also works closely with members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC), which was formed in 2003 to enable the collection of a rich body of Internet content from around the world and foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards that enable the creation of international archives. The Library of Congress is a founding member of the consortium, whose members include the national libraries of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom and the Internet Archive (U.S.), plus several others.
The library's announcement via Twitter. The US Library of Congress plans to create an archive of every "tweet," or post made on Twitter. It announced the move via Twitter.

Twitter's general counsel Alex MacGillivray told the ''BBC'': "I think it shows the tweets are an interesting part of the historical record. This project however is not about us, it is about our users and the fact they use the service to chronicle these amazing events. President Obama actually tweeted after he was elected. That is a big deal and it's something he did. It is not something we imagined when we were forming the service."

The library plans to highlight the historically significant tweets such as Barack Obama's tweet when he won the 2008 presidential election.


Although the library plans a Twitter archive, it does not indicate a change of the Library of Congress' focus. The library reportedly has 160 terabytes (163,840 gigabytes) of data already taken from other Internet sources.

There are around 50 million tweets sent per day, all less than 140 characters; the total number of tweets has gone into the billions.