The Our Future Memory movement continues to grow, with the EveryLibrary Institute (ELI) formally joining the global coalition and endorsing the Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online. ELI’s participation brings a powerful policy-focused perspective to the effort to ensure that libraries, archives, and museums retain the rights they need to fulfill their public mission in a digital world.
EveryLibrary Institute explained its reason for joining the Our Future Memory movement:
By joining the Our Future Memory coalition and endorsing the Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online, the EveryLibrary Institute is hoping to advance a broader conversation that reaches beyond copyright reform alone and asks deeper questions about ownership, stewardship, creativity, and the future of reading in a digital society. We believe that this conversation must include libraries and educators, but also independent booksellers, independent publishers, authors, technologists, policymakers, and readers themselves. The health of the creative economy and our democratic society depends on getting this right.
About the Statement
The Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online aims to safeguard the essential digital activities of libraries, archives, and museums (collectively referred to as “memory institutions”). It urges policymakers and communities to ensure these institutions retain the same rights and responsibilities online that they have historically held offline, including the rights to:
Collect digital materials, including through digitization and lawful acquisition;
Preserve digital works, including repair, backup, and reformatting for long-term access;
Provide controlled access to digital collections for research and public use; and
Cooperate across institutions by sharing and transferring digital collections to strengthen preservation and access.
The end of 2025 brought news of the passing of Stewart Cheifet, creator of Computer Chronicles, and Net Cafe, two shows about electronics and computers that are, depending on your personal history, critical pieces of your knowledge of Comptuers or a show you might never have heard of. Running on PBS stations throughout the country for years, these shows brought a sense of fun and curiousity to computer technology, business and related subjects. In many cases, these interviews are among the only easily-found references to the people and subjects being discussed.
There is an excellent obituary in the New York Times, but it should be also be remembered how much of a thread of collaboration existed over the decades, between Cheifet and the Internet Archive.
The most prominent exhibit of Stewart Cheifet’s collaboration are theComputer Chronicles and Net Cafe collections at the Internet Archive, where hundreds of episodes are freely playable and downloadable.
These programs, usually a half-hour in length, included different segments and presenters, although Cheifet was a constant. The format would range from news stories to on-set interviews with the creators, business owners, and users of various computer technologies. The show ran from 1983 to 2002, splitting off Net Cafe in the 1990s.
A notable aspect of these shows are the wild variety of subjects, many still relevant in the present day, being presented and discussed as they burst into the consciousness of comptuer users. Desktop Video Editing, Virtual Universities, Cyber Privacy all make appearances, as do terms long out of the lexicon, like Push Technology.
“I hold him in such high esteem,” says Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive. “He was always great work with, and had that fantastic voice.”
Brewster Kahle, interviewed on Net Cafe in 2001.
After being interviewed for Net Cafe about the plans for the Internet Archive, Brewster asked Stewart about the archive of episodes of Computer Chronicles and Net Cafe. Chiefet said he wished they were available. The Archive offered to host any digitized files, and the project began.
In the era of streaming servies and Youtube, it is very easy to forget how rare and difficult large-format video files were to provide to the Internet at large, even into the early 2000s. Files would often be available only on FTP sites and the torrent protocol was extremely new. To be providing such files for a wide audience of these materials was a difficult prcoess.
By Brewster’s recollection, the shows have been re-encoded a half dozen times across the decades, from RealMedia to MPEG-1/MPEG-2, flash video. and currently in MPEG-4. (The original high file-size originals were kept through all these upgrades).
“Over all these decades, he was the real guy,” says Brewster. “This was a guy who was willing to put his creation on the Internet, for free. A guy who wasn’t just a journalist, or observer, but was trying to make the Internet go, and he came and worked with us to make us go.”
During his time with the Internet Archive, “Stewart worked with other organizations to bring items to the Internet Archive. Many were gummed up by contracts – he then offered Creative Commons licenses.” Support of Creative Commons has continued with Internet Archive uploads ever since.
The Re-Digitization
Standing as it had for almost 20 years, the Computer Chronicles collection was extremely popular, garnering hundreds of thousands of views along the episodes. However, there was one notable angle beyond its longevity – the oversights.
Small imperfections had existed across the hundreds of digitized episodes: Various episodes were missing, and some had missing tracks of sound.
A few years before he left California, Stewart Cheifet donated his collection of Computer Chronicles and related media from his personal collection to the Internet Archive, where they were transferred to Physical Storage. These included every tape digitized by the initial project, as well as other tapes that were unlabelled or mislabeled.
This group, the Computer Chronicles Archiving project, requested access to the stored physical tapes and began verifying them against the list, discovering that some tapes contained multiple episodes, or were in different formats from the initial digitizing run. Ultimately, they began re-digitizing episodes from the ground up, starting with missing episodes.
The results of the Computer Chronicles Re-Digitization project have been successful so far, with missing episodes restored for posterity, and improvements to some previous episodes as well.
Computer Chronicles: The Encore
With such wide availability, it was inevitable there would be a cultural reference or parody referencing Computer Chronices, and it came in the Adam Lisagor-produced Computer Show, where two hosts from the 1980s interview modern (2016) web celebrities. The gimmick was that the hosts didn’t understand any reference to computer technology past their own time, providing confused looks any time the interviewee referenced them.
Computer Show imitates many of the aesthetic aspects of Computer Chronicles.
As part of ongoing experimentations in access to visual media combined with automated transcription and subject searches, the GDELT project created a Computer Chronicles Visual Explorer in 2023.
There’s more projects and use to come – because of the open licensing, the episodes of Computer Chronicles on the Archive will be available for reference, research, and evidence of a time when computers and online life had an entirely other flavor. While Stewart Cheifet is no longer with us, his lifelong project of bringing computer technology and experience to a wide audience and his connections to so many who have formed the Computer and Web experience live on.
Explore the works that have entered the public domain in 2026, below.
On January 1, 2026, we celebrate published works from 1930 and published sound recordings from 1925 entering the public domain! Their arrival marks another chapter in our shared cultural heritage: the freedom to breathe new life into overlooked works, remix enduring classics, and circulate the oddities we discover in thrift stores, family attics, and forgotten corners of the internet.
For the first time since the 1970s, works from a new decade have entered the public domain after their long copyright term. This milestone builds on the momentum that began when the public domain reopened in 2019. The works of 1930 reflect a world grappling with enormous change: the early years of the Great Depression, anxieties about banks and tariffs (sound familiar?), and a cultural landscape still humming with the last heartbeats of the 1920s.
The Jazz Age and flapper style persisted through Nancy Drew’s illustrations and Betty Boop’s design; Buster Keaton’s first talkie signaled the twilight of the silent era; and the Gershwins continued to shake-up musical culture with “I Got Rhythm” and “Embraceable You”. The Interwar period left its mark, too—the first filmed adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front won Best Picture. Audiences sought escapism in the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, in 19 new Disney cartoons, and in the gender-bending glamour of the pre-Hays Code film Morocco.
Culture was everywhere—and now, it belongs to everyone.
Musical Compositions
1930 saw the introduction of many standards into the Great American Songbook including the wistful “Dream A Little Dream of Me”, “Georgia on My Mind”, and “It Happened in Monterey”. The latter of those songs being a cultural curiosity as the spelling reflects the California city while the song is about the Mexican city. Hoagy Charmichael’s loving refrain for the state of Georgia with Georgia on My Mind would become the state’s official song in 1979.
Even inspiration for later 20th Century works bubbled up with “Beyond the Blue Horizon” which would serve as inspiration for the original Star Trek theme. At the Internet Archive the song reminds us of the blinking blue lights that help to power the 1 Trillion webpages saved.
Check out this list of more musical compositions from the year.
On the Sunny Side of the Street lyrics by Dorothy Fields, music by Jimmy McHugh
Just A Gigolo (first English translation), original German lyrics by Julius Brammer, English translation by Irving Caesar, music by Leonello Casucci
If we thought that detectives had a field day in 1929 then we just hadn’t seen what 1930 had to offer yet. Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Harriet Vane, and Sam Spade all featured in iconic works of the year respectively: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, The Secret of the Old Clock, Strong Poison, and the published novel edition of The Maltese Falcon. Nancy Drew appeared in four different stories this year giving readers and creatives plenty of stories and mysteries to dig into. But be careful and make sure you’re reading the original editions from 1930 and not the rewrites from the late 1950s. Luckily the Archive has the 1930 editions ready for you here in our collections!
While detective fiction dominated we also got bold works from other authors including As I Lay Dyingby William Faulkner which blends multiple perspectives and bold narrative experimentation to chronicle a family’s turbulent journey to honor their mother’s final request. Groundwork was also laid for another Best Picture winner with Edna Farber’s Cimarron. Children had works to entertain themselves with Dick and Jane’s introduction in Elson Basic Readers and a 1930 retelling of the folktale, The Little Engine That Could.
Dive into Archive’s literary collection to unearth more classics from 1930.
Film
A favorite film of this author is the King of Jazz, astunning Technicolor musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby, and elaborate song and dance numbers.
It wasn’t the only musical of the year as the Marx Brothers adapted their stage show Animal Crackersto the big screen in a film of the same name. Their comedic antics would absurdly riff on the culture of the time with Groucho directly parodying a monologue from Eugene O’Neill’s 1928 play, Strange Interlude.
While past the heyday of his filmic output, Buster Keaton was still on the scene with his first talkie, Free and Easy, entering the public domain this year. If you’ve never heard his voice before then it might surprise you! Another iconic comedy is Soup to Nuts, a vehicle for Rube Goldberg to share crazy contraptions on screen. It was also the debut of actors that would form The Three Stooges group a few years later.
In another reminder of how copyright expires on a yearly basis we’re talking about All Quiet on the Western Front for the third year in a row, but this time as the adaptation that won the 3rd Academy Award for Best Picture. The film is a sobering reminder and depiction of the horrors of war, and showcased how audiences in 1930 were still reeling from the first World War. It is also a very engaging and well rounded film that is still great cinema nearly 100 years later.
Even more icons made headway in 1930 with Alfred Hitchcock’s Murder!, John Wayne’s first leading role in The Big Trail, and Greta Garbo’s moving performance in Anna Christie.
Our film remix contest is ongoing until January 7, 2026, so please upload your submissions! Read more here.
Comics and Cartoons
Only a year removed from the 1920s, culture didn’t change overnight. Debuting on September 8, 1930, the Blondie comic strip by Chic Young was steeped in flapper style. Originally named Blondie Boopadoop, she drew on the singing persona of Helen Kane—who also inspired aspects of Betty Boop. For more on Betty Boop, read Jennifer Jenkins’ write-up at Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Mickey Mouse expanded from the screen to the page with 303 daily comic strips, sending him on western adventures, robber-chasing escapades, and more.
In 2026, we now have another 19 Disney shorts (9 Mickey, 10 Silly Symphonies) to help fill out this creative world. The Silly Symphonies rounded out their celebration of the seasons by following up 1929’s Springtime with Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
Meanwhile, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit—Mickey’s older brother—continued his prolific output even after Disney lost the rights to him in 1928. Under Walter Lantz, Oswald starred in 24 shorts this year, nearly 2.5 times Mickey’s total. Two of these, My Pal Paul and Africa, cross-promoted the film King of Jazz, proving that cinematic tie-ins have long been part of studio strategy.
Recap
The arrival of these works into the public domain is a reminder of our shared cultural heritage—of the stories, sounds, and images that shaped earlier generations and now become fair game for creative reuse. Many of these works have already been reimagined under copyright: Nancy Drew’s rewrites, the many adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front, Mickey Mouse’s leap into comics, and more.
Now, in 2026, these works pass into a space where everyone can study them, remix them, preserve them, and carry them forward.
The public domain belongs to all of us. Let’s explore it together.
What do a Belgian boy reporter, a forgotten 2008 webpage, and the Wayback Machine have in common? They all played a role in uncovering Tintin the Belgian detective’s earliest adventures as part of Public Domain Day 2025.
Intellectual Property rights lawyer Aaron Moss summarizes that the earliest 1929 Tintin stories became part of the U.S. public domain in 2025, while copyright continues elsewhere. Since Tintin was not published in the English language in 1929, those wanting to utilize the original stories must return to the original French-language publication. But when those sources are nearly 100 years old and from a different country, that makes tracking them down difficult. Even the best methods face unforeseen limitations when materials go out of print, become costly, or when websites go offline and inaccessible.
Luckily, we live in the 21st-Century with the connective power of the internet. Instead of traveling to Europe and searching in an archive to find original copies of Le Petit Vingtième, the initial children’s periodical that Tintin was published in, we can go online.
Even with the internet’s advantages, trying to find materials from that original 1929 publication proved to be challenging. Most searches for the initial Tintin story, In the Land of the Soviets, led me to republications with story alterations, later translated versions, or subsequent stories from beyond 1929. Yet, as each door kept closing, a window opened when reviewing the Le Petit Vingtième Wikipedia page. Buried in the description of the 1934 cover featured on the page was a link to a webpage from 2008. While the link was still on the page, it had rotted, now leading only to a dead page. Fortunately, we have the Wayback Machine.
The first Tintin comic
When plugging the rotted link into the Wayback Machine, I found an archived fan Tintin site. From that single archived link, my world of Tintin was blown wide open. Utilizing the Calendar feature of the Wayback Machine, I was able to navigate to a 2012 archive of the original 1929 comic strip. There were Tintin and Snowy in their original French appearance, along with the ensuing run of this initial tale. What had been obscure and abstract in its public domain status was now tangible and accessible thanks to the Wayback Machine.
The ability to locate the original Tintin stories in such an accessible way would not be possible without the Wayback Machine. The idea of 1 trillion web pages archived can be overwhelming in the abstract, but stories like this one remind us that the Wayback Machine is a portal to a living archive—enriching knowledge, culture, and access beyond the average lifespan of a link on the live web. The Wayback Machine supports and encourages creativity and reuse, and it feeds our common knowledge and cultural heritage.
This post is published with a CC0 license, dedicating it to the public domain.
CNNThe New YorkerThe New York TimesKQEDScientific AmericanArs TechnicaBBC NewsNPRIEEE Spectrum
In 2025, a global conversation emerged about memory, power and who controls the historical record. As governments deleted web pages, platforms broke links, and public data quietly (and not so quietly) disappeared, journalists around the world turned to the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine to understand what was being lost, what could still be saved, and why preservation matters more than ever. From investigations in The New Yorker and The New York Times to video features from the BBC and CNN, these stories capture how the fight to preserve the web became one of the defining information battles of the year.
Audrey Witters remembers the creativity of the early web.
Audrey Witters
When she was launching her career in the mid-1990s, being online was more about exploring and having fun than figuring out how to make a return on investment. Witters said if you were curious about someone’s web page, you could simply click to see their code or email them with questions. She enjoyed how accessible the early web community was and the feeling of connection.
Now a business consultant in San Jose, she spoke at the Internet Archive’s Oct. 22 celebration, praising its efforts to save digital content and encouraging innovation through experimentation.
Watch Witters’ remarks:
“Thank you to the Internet Archive for preserving the history of the early web, that time of collective effort and quirky, chaotic creation, so that we can have really fun moments of nostalgia,” Witters said from the stage, “but even more so that the next generation of creators can be inspired to find their own ways to promote exploration, collaboration and joyful expression.”
Witters shared the story of her career and the influence the internet has had on her work before there was much pressure to monetize content.
Witters’ famous animated GIF
After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, Witters built her early career in the tech sector. Witters garnered attention for helping design a small, animated alien GIF at a graphic art software company. Her work was featured in a 1996 book, GIF Animation Studio, by Richard Koman.
In those early days, it was exciting to come into work each morning to see if any new web servers had launched, Witters said. She was on the lookout for new and interesting approaches to digital layout, movement, or interactivity. She followed a graduate student posting pictures of his daily vegetarian lunch – a forerunner of the food bloggers – and witnessed the beginning of e-commerce. Content was diverse and the web reflected a diversity of voices.
Witters leveraged what she learned to develop an expertise in project management, and said she’d like to see more of that early online creativity carried over to confront today’s challenges.
“Business relies on innovation. Innovation is based on creativity, and creativity comes from fun,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time for fun these days.”
Prioritizing profit without including time for play is not good for individuals, society or businesses in the long run, Witters maintains. As systems evolve, creativity is needed to meet changing demands and unleash new ideas.
For 20 years, Witters worked at Stanford University in the Graduate School of Business, including a decade as the inaugural managing director of online executive programs. Following that role she founded her own company, Learning Impact Advisors, helping higher education clients develop career programs that amplify their mission.
Witters recalls with fondness the “Wild West” days of the early web: “It’s important to preserve that spirit and be inspired by it.”
DWeb Seminar Weekend participants sharing a meal in San Francisco. (Image from Wendy Hanamura licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)
Our communities will continue to be shaped by digital networked technology, changing the way we work, learn, and go about our lives. DWeb is a community of people deeply engaged with these changes, earnestly grappling with what it means to design and build values-centered tech. It is a community that is not only reacting to shifting realities, but one that activates transformation — constructing alternative tools, languages, and approaches using our skills as technologists, organizers, designers, artists, and researchers.
Last year, we decided that it was time to see how we could further decentralize the DWeb movement. By taking a year off from organizing DWeb Camp, our team of DWeb Core Organizers directed our energy toward attending and organizing focused events and workshops throughout 2025. Dweebs around the world were already convening locally and planning aligned events, we also wanted to support the growth of our international network of Nodes (more on their activities below).
We’re thrilled to see all that our community has done this past year: gathering, developing, and dreaming together. Here is a look back at the major events and happenings across the DWeb Network!
Conferences + Gatherings
RightsCon25
The first major event DWeb participated this year was RightsCon in Taipei, Taiwan. In February, Senior Organizer, mai ishikawa sutton, co-organized a pre-conference workshop on community mesh networks with g0v, the leading decentralized civic technology community in Taiwan, focused on local community networks at the National Taipei University of Technology. We also participated in several sessions at the conference itself. Several other DWeb community members, including Ying Tong Lai and riley wong, organized and participated in a community privacy residency in the weeks surrounding the conference.
In early June, members of the organizing team, Ira Nezhynska and Arkadiy Kukarkin, set up the DWeb Atelier at the Funding the Commons Forum in Berlin. The cozy hang out area at the Forum was a space for new and familiar faces to give small talks and host emergent discussions on human-centered network infrastructures that center privacy, community, and digital autonomy.
DWeebs hanging out at the DWeb Terrace at FtC Berlin Forum, 2025 (Image by Ira Nezhynska licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
About 60 dweebs gathered this summer on Salt Spring Island for the first DWeb Camp Cascadia. The leaders of DWeb YVR (Vancouver) organized a beautiful three-day event from August 8-10. It included talks, demos, and workshops on topics ranging from local-first networks, mesh technologies, and open social webs
In mid-August, 10 advanced peer-to-peer (P2P) developers and researchers, two research directors, one editor, and three stewards met for three days and nights in San Francisco to discuss the current state of local-first, P2P protocols and strategize to overcome the immediate challenges ahead. The premise was: brilliant minds + human connections = potential breakthroughs. The seminar concluded with the DWeb Weekend, with talks (recordings available here) showcasing the protocols and approaches to building offline-first, permissionless, trustworthy, and resilient networks.
Photo of DWeb Seminar Weekend participants on a hike in San Francisco. (Wendy Hanamura, CC BY-SA 4.0)
DWeb Node Network
Since our first DWeb Camp in 2019 at the Mushroom Farm, dweebs have continued to gather locally around the world. The Node Network has grown, contracted, and shifted in the past six years. Some meet several times a month and some meet once or twice a year. As the DWeb Core team, we do what we can to support those organizing local meetups and encourage those with the commitment and capacity to more formally establish a Node in their city or region.
Here are the Nodes that met in person to explore DWeb topics and projects as they relate to their local context:
Our most active Node, DWeb YVR organized DWeb Camp Cascadia and hosted more than 30 events in 2025! They have regular meetups on AT Protocol, mesh networks, Folk Tech, and more recently, a monthly book club.
“DWeb Vancouver’s first #lofiwknyvr was a big success in January, here Boris, David and Chad are starting us off with a welcome from the proprietor of ZSpace, a coworking hub with a lot of local DWeb overlap.” (Photo and caption by Emily McGill, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Members of our Node in New York met up at Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) in August at St. John’s University in Queens. They set up a DWeb table and shared what DWeb is about with the east coast hacker community.
Rosalind, Charles, and Val tabling at HOPE_16 in August (Image from DWeb NY, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)
They also designed and printed these cool stickers!
Limited edited DWeb @ HOPE stickers at the DWeb table. (Image from DWeb NY, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)
DWeb Shanghai
Though they took a bit of a hiatus, Shanghai is one of our longest running Nodes. They organized a weekend meetup last month in November, in-person and online. Wendy Hanamura, our Senior Organizer, gave an introduction to DWeb, Brooklyn Zelenka gave a talk on local-first tech, and they also featured speakers on AT Protocol.
New and Upcoming Nodes
We’re excited by the prospect of two new potential Nodes emerging! This month, dweebs in Tokyo met up for a kick-off meetup where they discussed the social implications and state of the current web, and played with meshtastic radios.
Group hoto from the first DWeb meetup in Tokyo. Clockwise from top left: Tora, Yuuya, Shotaro, Takumi, Seiya. Justus. (Image by DWeb Tokyo licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
And just last week, about 20 people met up at the Atlanta Blockchain Center for the first DWeb Meetup in Atlanta. Senior Organizer, mai ishikawa sutton, had a fireside chat with 2023 DWeb Fellow, Blake Stoner, to discuss the DWeb Principles, and the future of the web.
Group photo from the first DWeb meetup in Atlanta (Image from Blake Stoner, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0)
Virtual Meetups
To keep the conversation and ideas flowing across the DWeb Network, we organize virtual meetups for people to showcase their projects, ideas, and approaches. You can watch all of our virtual meetups from 2025 below.
DWeb Meetup – Bluesky & Beyond(February 2025) // On Bluesky, AT Protocol, and efforts to build an open interoperable ecosystem of social networks.
DWeb Meetup – Decentralized Tech to Resist Authoritarianism (July 2025) // On decentralized technologies and approaches people are using to resist authoritarianism. Speakers demonstrated tools in use today around the world that combat censorship, promote privacy, and strengthen peer-to-peer movements.
We always feel the need to use more of the DWeb tools that we nurture through our organizing work. This year, we were able to practice what we preach by decentralizing some of our infrastructure.
One major achievement was the launch of DWeb.events, our shared calendar hosted forked from open-web-calendar. It enabled anyone to see what’s going on in our community and subscribe directly to the events.
DWeb Websites
This year, we made getdweb.net and dwebcamp.org accessible through the decentralized web, thanks to Distributed Press. To check it out, visit ipns://getdweb.net from your favourite decentralized browser like Peersky, or just by installing the IPFS extension on a regular browser.
We were also able to update the software infrastructure behind the DWeb Camp website — made possible through the generous contributions of Justus Perlwitz (who also happens to be one of the organizers of the meetup in Tokyo!).
DWeb Discord <> Matrix Bridge
Our DWeb Core Team is constantly asked, “Discord isn’t decentralized, so why are you using it?” It’s a totally fair question. The reason is that we want to have a community chat that’s as friction-less to use and is a platform that meets people where they already are as much as possible. But we also do recognize that it’s not a values-aligned platform.
We’ve long had a channel on Matrix as well — which is an open, decentralized real-time communication protocol. And now, these two services are bridged! Thanks to Hypha Worker Co-op who is hosting our Matrix server and bridging service. How can you get more decentralized than that?
As we move into a new year, the DWeb Core Team looks forward to continuing to steward this community of people passionately committed to building a better Web.
…and stay tuned for details on DWeb Camp 2026, coming soon!
When someone calls up a single webpage in a digital archive, it’s difficult to understand the scope of the collection. To improve the visibility and appreciation of its resources, the Internet Archive Europe partnered with software engineers and the Internet Archive to develop an interactive display that gives users a sense of what all is available at their fingertips.
This fall, an installation was unveiled in the Netherlands and later demonstrated by Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle at the October 22 celebration in San Francisco.
“The idea is to be able to show and play with the breadth that people have accomplished and the depth that we have all built together,” Kahle said. “This is the web we built. This is the web that we want. This is the web we want to make go from 1 trillion to 2 trillion to 3 trillion.”
The initial display included screenshots of more than 85,000 Dutch websites preserved over the past 30 years. Visitors to the National Library in the Netherlands used a physical joystick and buttons to explore a variety of webpages in a game-like experience. With their voices, they can direct the machine to zoom in on specific topics or domains. The screenshots are laid out in a semantic grid, where websites with similar topics appear together in a cluster. Both topics and layout are extracted using AI–based tools (VLM, embeddings).
The idea started with Kai Jauslin in 2020 when he was working with the Swiss National Library to help the public visualize its digital collection. Jauslin, a software engineer and owner of Nextension.com, https://www.nextension.com/ and Barbara Signori, a digital librarian, created an interactive display that went live in 2021, reflecting 80,000 snapshots of archived web pages in the Swiss library collection. (It has since grown to more than 115,000.)
Once Kahle saw the Swiss project, he was interested in developing something similar using the Wayback Machine. In January, Jauslin got the green light to make the project open source so he could reuse everything he’d developed for the Swiss library for the Internet Archive Europe. He then collaborated with a team at the Internet Archive including Jefferson Bailey, director of archiving and data services.
“One of the goals of this project was to be able to show the depth [of the collection] and how big everything is,” Jauslin said.
Bailey extracted the data, made over 1 million screenshots, created formatting to adapt the project framework to feature webpages from the Netherlands collection. The screenshots were used in the interface backed by the Wayback Machine.
“This showcases these collections and makes them more tangible and usable in different ways,” Bailey said. “It’s not just looking at the archive copy of one website, but looking at all of them and searching across categories. You can zoom in and zoom out with functionality that was not available before. It showcases these collections. “
In addition to being a cool tech project, Bailey said, the display has an advocacy element in helping demonstrate the value and scope of digital collections. The display is a good “public engagement” opportunity that lets library patrons interact and grasp the scale of the available resources.
The visibility is a useful tool in making the case to funders and the government to support open resources and library preservation.
At the National Library of the Netherlands, Sophie Ham, curator of the digital collection, said the display shows that life on the internet is worth preserving.
“We were very enthusiastic about this concept [of the display] because our web archive is very hidden. People barely know it’s there,” Ham said. “We need people to acknowledge the importance of a web archive – but to acknowledge it, you have to make it visible and more attractive.”
The display made the collection visible, she said, and the low-barrier, interactive element has been embraced by visitors.
“It helps us get into people’s mind that web archives are as important as books in collections of national libraries,” Ham said.
As technology advances, Jauslin said he hopes the project will continue to expand; Bailey added the hope is to customize the display to other national libraries that express interest.
What makes Pooh Pooh? The answer lies not only in author A.A. Milne’s prose, but also in the quiet genius of E. H. Shepard’s original illustrations. With Shepard’s work now in the public domain, it’s the perfect opportunity to revisit how these deceptively simple drawings became cultural touchstones.
Some of my favorite all time books are the Winnie-the-Pooh novels by A. A. Milne. They’re stories of childhood, of learning lessons, of escapism, and, ultimately, of having to grow up. These texts are written with wit, humor, warmth, and a cadence that brings joyful surprises on every page. And, these stories benefit from the enchanting illustrations of E. H. Shepard. Born on December 10, 1879, he was a frequent collaborator of Milne’s and a titan among British illustrators. His sketchy illustrations bring the story’s text to life, and they cause the reader’s imagination to expand. Without them, these books would not have the same identity that they do now. The stories would persist, but the strong visual identity of the characters takes them a step beyond to stick in readers’ minds. Now, in the public domain, we can appreciate these books and Shepard’s illustrations with a more rigorous attention. Let’s examine some of my favorites, how they elevate the story/situation of the text, and why they mean so much to the reader.
Shepard depicts Pooh as shirtless throughout the books except when it is cold and snowy outside. For the story it functions as characterization, showing Pooh’s adaptation to the cold. Unintentionally, however, Shepard laid the seeds for Pooh’s iconic design in most media. This shirt would later become a visual anchor for Pooh’s identity, reaching further iconic status when it was colored red for the first time on the cover of a 1932 record.
Piglet’s portrayal demonstrates how gesture and expression reveal personality beyond the written page. Shepard’s illustrations become an active storytelling partner to Milne’s text.
“Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him. “Look!” “What?” said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn’t been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice in an exercising sort of way”.
Despite its static nature, the illustration creates a sense of movement through jumping. Piglet’s pose, extended arms and kicked-out leg, convinces the reader that Piglet is jumping in an “exercising sort of way” rather than just being frightened. Shepard’s drawing enhances the text by leaving viewers with strong character imagery. Even the snowy environment becomes believable against a plain background, as the pair leave small scattered footprints behind. Shepard enhances Milne’s prose, transforming simple descriptions into lasting visuals that inform culture and character for Pooh and Piglet.
Shepard uses scale, motion, and comedic timing to reveal Piglet’s personality more vividly than words alone can. Throughout the books, Piglet’s small size shifts for the visual storytelling needs. At first glance, Piglet looks cute carrying the balloon with a jaunty gait and uptilted head, but then the scale hits: the balloon towers over him, and he’s straining just to wrap his arms around it. That struggle becomes a window into his character: anxious but committed, small but determined to be a good friend. Shepard lets the image do the talking, showing Piglet’s devotion without a single word.
Ultimately, Piglet’s physical limitations get the best of him as he ends up popping the balloon, leaving it as tattered scrap. Milne captures the chaos in a single explosive line:
“Bang!!!???***!!!”
Shepard’s diptych captures the split-second transformation from proud gift-bearing to sudden uncertainty as the balloon goes from full to scrap in just one frame. Shepard depicts this suddenness with lines trailing behind Piglet as he’s still being carried by the momentum of that sudden pop. In two simple images, Shepard depicts character, action, and consequence.
I won’t spoil how the chapter ends, but it’s a happy ending.
Eeyore is the most deeply depressed of the Pooh characters, and Shepard visualizes that melancholy literally: snow piling up over him. Even the imagery surrounding himself turns gloomy. There is a darkness within the sky, being shaded with grey and dark spots reflecting the dark atmosphere that hangs around Eeyore daily. From the first image, Eeyore’s head sadly droops down, and, as the images continue, the snow obfuscates his face showing his total resignation to his lived reality. The effect is poetic: the invisible burdens of depression made real, a cold blanket piling up over him.
Unsaid in the images is what Milne conveys in the text, that Eeyore has already done the hard work: reaching out to a friend. Eeyore stands in the snow as he speaks with Christopher Robin seeking help to restore his stick house and get out of the cold. He even looks on the bright side that “we haven’t had an earthquake lately”. Even in stillness, these drawings ask us to notice Eeyore’s effort: he is still here and still trying. Shepard gives his quiet resilience a shape we can see.
One of the core themes of the second book is the end of childhood. Christopher Robin is often absent, with mentions of his time now being spent at school. Any moment he returns to the forest carries an added emotional weight, a reminder that these carefree days are fleeting. Milne’s text sets the scene:
“Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the bridge, feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen didn’t matter a bit, as it didn’t on such a happy afternoon”
Shepard’s illustration reflects these words. Christopher Robin is drawn with a light, unburdened gait — hand in pocket, a single bite missing from the apple he carries — as if there’s no rush to finish anything. The surrounding environment has a sense of relief and carefree energy as plants rustle in his wake, and curved strokes in the sky suggest a bright breeze carrying the moment forward. Undefined territory in front of Christopher Robin suggests possibility, as if the future is unknown and undefined for him. Christopher Robin literally steps into this undefined future. This image truly does enhance the text and elevates it for the audience as we can more readily imagine and feel ourselves in its place. There is no worry about “twice nineteen” in sight.
Building on the carefree attitude from the previous image, Shepard shows Christopher Robin lingering on a bridge with nothing to do and nowhere else to be: an essential part of childhood. The lush natural environment surrounding the characters, note Pooh and Piglet also on the bridge, contrasts the mentioned school setting that Christopher Robin came from. Nature is the escape from school and responsibilities.
When turning to Pooh and Piglet, Shepard gives the duo their own moment of friendship. Piglet gently rests his hand on Pooh, a subtle gesture of comfort and reassurance, that goes unsaid by text. Piglet’s touch emphasizes his need for reassurance as he is the only one without a bar separating him from the river. Shepard’s illustration enhances the three’s friendship as they look out at the river in shared silence, content simply to exist in each other’s company. Milne’s text reinforces this idea:
“For a long time they looked at the river beneath them, saying nothing, and the river said nothing too, for it felt very quiet and peaceful on this summer afternoon.”
Since The House at Pooh Corner has been about leaving childhood behind all along, it naturally ends with a goodbye. For many of us, childhood doesn’t vanish all at once, but slowly fades as we hold onto the pieces that matter most. In a story, though, it has to end somewhere. Milne suggests that this ending is an enduring enchanted place.
“So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”
This sentiment is reflected in Shepard’s illustration: two silhouettes holding hands mid leap. Etching themselves onto the page and reinforcing their enduring connection. Their slight leap evokes a playfulness and a sense of things not yet complete as they have yet to fall. These two creative choices reinforce the “always” of Milne’s words. The finality is not in the goodbye, but in the forever of the moment in which we leave them, as referenced in the title of the chapter. And, reflecting the form of the book, they are always there whenever we seek to return.
Shepard’s illustrations bring meaning and life to the text. The next time you read through the Pooh books, take a moment to appreciate the scratchy stylings of E. H. Shepard, and think about what they say for the characters and scenarios. And of course this could be done as soon as you want. Both the 1926 and 1928 books are in the public domain and our collections!
