A Peek Inside the Physical Archive: Where the Past Finds a Future

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Jeremy Modell (right) explains how library materials are packed and shipped. Photos by Brad Shirakawa, October 21, 2025.

The Physical Archive in Richmond, California, turned into a festive venue October 21, welcoming the public to one of the places where millions of donated items are preserved.  

Nearly 350 people filled the Physical Archive to see the collection and learn how the organization processes donated materials for access and preservation.

Brewster Kahle gives a tour at the Physical Archive.

On a tour of the facility, Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian, shows an area where donated items are separated by media type on pallets. “Can somebody read off one?” he asks the group. They shout out: “Yearbooks! Sheet music! Microfiche! Laser discs! Audio books! Manuals!” Kahle explains the “Ephemera” label includes posters and pamphlets.

“This is just part of our way of trying to find the great things that should be saved for another generation,” Kahle said.

Liz Rosenberg, physical donations manager, describes how an app can be used to scan a book’s bar code and determine if it’s a duplicate or something needed in the collection. The app is available for anyone to download and use.

“Our mission is to preserve and digitize one copy of every unique item we can find,” said Rosenberg, who arranges for the shipment of donations of all sizes and types from books to vinyl record collections.

Learn about donating physical items

Decluttering his East Bay home in the last few years, musician Klaus Flouride (bassist for the Dead Kennedys) has given the Archive several boxes of records he accumulated on his own, from his parents and estate sales—some dating back to 1901. “I didn’t want them to go in the trash bin. I know they are preserved here,” said Flouride, who looks forward to having access to the music online and attended the event to learn more about where his donation ended up.  

Elizabeth MacLeod demos the Scribe book scanning station.

At another station, Elizabeth MacLeod demonstrates the Scribe software used to capture images of books being digitized for the Archive.

“How many pages do you do in an hour?” asks Susie Kameny, a public school teacher in San Francisco. MacLeod said she can finish over 200 pages an hour, then answers questions about scanning books in foreign languages and shares the steps of proofing the digitized version before it’s uploaded.

Kameny had been to Internet Archive’s headquarters on Funston Avenue for a professional development session for educators, but was curious to learn more at the Physical Archive. In her classes, Kameny said she shows students how to use the Archive, and finds it’s useful for locating primary resources and various materials to incorporate into her lessons.

“Every time I turn around, there’s a new collection or a new thing that they’re working on—and I think of a new way to teach about that,” said Kameny, who values the Archive as a trusted “anti-deep fake” source at a time when AI is emerging. “It’s very thoughtful, the way the Archive has [preserved materials]. We’re so lucky to have this.”

Learn about donating physical items

Christian Wignall said he’s found old books, newspapers articles, and photographs on cycling through the Internet Archive, which have been helpful as he prepared papers for the International Cycling History Conference. After having recently driven several carloads of academic books to the Archive to donate for a friend who was moving, Wignall said it was interesting to see where everything is processed at the Physical Archive.

“I’m just amazed at the scale of it,” Wignall said. “It’s just an enormous endeavor and an enormous place.”

Autumn Armstrong (seated), film prepaper and metadata creator, talks with a guest at the Prelinger Archives stop on the Physical Archive tour.

Upstairs at the Prelinger Archive, Rick Prelinger describes the “magic process” that his team undertake to repair and preserve motion picture film, including documentaries and industrial advertising.

Steve Crawford came to the event to explore the possibility of donating some of his family’s  collections of film, maps and books to the Archive. His great grandfather had newsreel footage with aircraft from his factory in Southern California, along with aviation maps and magazines from the 1920s. His father had a hobby of recording above-ground nuclear bomb tests near where he grew up in the Mojavie desert, and Crawford thinks the film might be of interest to the broader community.

“I have miscellaneous things that have accumulated, so for me, this is like ‘wow’ I can get some of this out of my garage,” said Crawford, who is excited to connect with the Archive and begin the donation process.

Maeve Iwasaki demonstrates microfiche digitization.

With the new microfiche digitization center, Louis Brizuela said visitors were interested in how the operation works – the camera, the process and the science behind it. “It’s nice to see the faces that are actually reading and looking at the material,” he said.

Brian McNeilly, a volunteer who worked to improve the digital accessibility of Open Library when he was in graduate school for library science, said he was impressed by the size of the Physical Archive and the scope of materials – including microfiche.

“I haven’t thought much about microfiche since I was probably in middle school when I had to use it for research projects,” said McNeilly, who now works with the University of California Office of the President on digital accessibility. “There’s a reason we adopted microfiche way back when. And, of course, it’s still relevant and we’re starting to preserve and digitize it.”

Sandy Chu, a Google Summer of Code volunteer who worked on an open source translation project with the Archive, said she enjoyed looking at all the media on display at the event from iPods to VHS tapes. 

“There are just so many formats that exist,” she said. “It makes you appreciate there are people putting in the effort to figure out how we can convert these forms of media for future generations.”

Celebrate 1 Trillion Web Pages with Original Net.Art Works: Internet Archive x Gray Area

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Pretty Guardian Shrine (2025) by Ophira Horwitz

Internet Archive x Gray Area: Trillionth Webpage Net.Art Commissions
Date: Saturday, November 1
Time: 5:00 to 8:00pm
Location: Internet Archive, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco
Admission: Free
REGISTER NOW!

The Internet Archive has reached an extraordinary milestone: one trillion web pages archived. This civilization-scale achievement marks decades of dedication to preserving the ephemeral nature of digital culture and ensuring universal access to human knowledge.

To commemorate this historic moment, San Francisco interdisciplinary arts and technology non-profit Gray Area has partnered with the Internet Archive to commission a series of original net.art works that engage with the vast holdings of the Internet Archive and explore what it means to create, preserve, and access culture online.

REGISTER NOW

Commissioned Artists

  • Chia Amisola
  • Spencer Chang
  • Sarah Friend & Arkadiy Kukarkin
  • Ophira Horwitz
  • Mai Ishikawa-Sutton & Raúl Feliz
  • Olivia McKayla Ross
  • Jesse Walton
  • Rodell Warner

The commissioned artists have drawn from the Internet Archive’s expansive collections to create web-based artworks that reflect on themes of memory, digital archaeology, and the human stories embedded within preserved data. These works exist as both online experiences and physical installations at the Internet Archive, bridging the digital and material worlds in ways that honor the Archive’s dual nature as both a technological achievement and a profoundly human endeavor.

Curated by Amir Esfahani (Internet Archive) and Wade Wallerstein (Gray Area)

Happy Internet Archive Day!

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Rally for Internet Archive Day on the steps of SF City Hall, October 21, 2025.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has officially declared October 22, 2025, as Internet Archive Day in the City and County of San Francisco. Sponsored by Supervisor Connie Chan (District 1), the resolution passed unanimously in recognition of the Internet Archive’s extraordinary milestone—preserving 1 trillion web pages. The resolution celebrates the Archive’s enduring mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge” and our deep roots in the city where it was founded nearly three decades ago.

Before the Board meeting, supporters took to the steps of City Hall for a rally celebrating the resolution and achievement. Speakers included:

  • Supervisor Connie Chan, District 1
  • Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian, Internet Archive
  • Michael Lambert, City Librarian for the City and County of San Francisco
  • Swilk, artist in residence, Internet Archive

From our headquarters in the Richmond District, the Internet Archive has grown into a global library of digital culture, preserving not only the web, but also books, music, video, and software for generations to come. As the city marks Internet Archive Day, San Franciscans join a worldwide community in celebrating the power of preservation and the shared effort to ensure that the web we’ve built remains accessible to everyone.

Celebrate With the Internet Archive

To mark the occasion, the Internet Archive is hosting a street party and livestream celebration tonight at our Richmond District headquarters. Join us in person for live music, food, and festivities—or tune in online from anywhere in the world to be part of this milestone moment. Together, we’ll celebrate 1 trillion webpages archived and look ahead to the next trillion in our shared digital history.

Register for in person or livestream tickets!

Web Archive 96: How the Smithsonian Helped Create One of the First Wayback Machine Collections

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Screenshot from the Wayback Machine of the Web Archive 96 project page (October 11, 1997).

In 1996, the World Wide Web was starting to catch on. Politicians were just beginning to explore how to use online communication to reach voters. And in a house in San Francisco, the fledgling Internet Archive was starting to archive pieces of the web before they disappeared.

That same year, a letter arrived from Washington, D.C., with the Smithsonian Institution’s iconic sunburst logo at the top. The Smithsonian had agreed to partner with the Internet Archive to preserve the digital record of the 1996 U.S. presidential election.

“It was a major milestone for us,” recalls Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. “The big Smithsonian was working with this new little Internet Archive nonprofit library.”

Together, the two institutions launched Web Archive 96, one of the first web collections the Internet Archive ever created. It captured the early campaign webpages of candidates Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Ross Perot — online brochures filled with policy positions, photos, and promises — along with news coverage of the race. It was a pioneering effort to preserve the political life of a nation as it moved onto the web. The collection is now a foundational part of our cultural history on the web, and is available for public access via the Wayback Machine.

Explore Web Archive 96 via the Wayback Machine

Nearly thirty years later, that collaboration still stands out as visionary: two institutions, one old and one new, working together to recognize the internet as part of our shared cultural record.

Politics Goes Digital

We the People: Winning the Vote exhibit installation, National Museum of American History, 1996-2000.

In Washington, D.C., the National Museum of American History added a personal computer displaying online presidential election website content to its “We The People” campaign exhibit. “It was delivered and was displayed next to campaign buttons from the 1800s,” Kahle recalled.

Indeed, Smithsonian curators Larry Bird and Harry Rubenstein traveled to New Hampshire and Iowa every four years to collect buttons, signs and physical memorabilia from the campaign offices. Just as television changed the political landscape in the 1960s, they recognized the potential influence of the web in 1996. When they heard Kahle was archiving campaigns, Bird said they were “ecstatic” to collaborate.

“We were all over it,” said Bird, now a curator emeritus from the Smithsonian division of political history. “We were super glad that we could take this non-dimensional thing and for it to have a presence on the floor – even in this most rudimentary, stripped down way – limited to the candidates’ websites. It was an acknowledgement of where things were heading.”

Jeff Ubois, who forged the partnership in 1996, recalled “Why would anyone care about the ephemera of the web?” as the prevailing attitude at the time. “The Smithsonian helped change some of that.”

Once the Internet Archive partnered with the Smithsonian, “it wasn’t possible to dismiss web archiving as irrelevant, impossible, useless,” Ubois said.

People contact the Smithsonian often, Bird said, and the Internet Archive outreach was unexpected, but welcome. “We were constantly looking at the way things were shifting in politics, which always takes what’s popular and successful in the real world and bends it into its own political world or reality,” he said. “And this just seemed to be yet, the latest iteration of that as a cultural phenomenon….To have [the Internet Archive] assemble it wasn’t anything that any of us could have done at the time.”

‘Collection of Record for the Web’

Bird said the Internet Archive is a “remarkable resource” that he and other researchers have relied on for years.

“The museum is the collection of record for material things, objects, and dimensional things. And the Internet Archive is the collection of record for the web and all that implies,” Bird said. “There’s hardly anything that it doesn’t touch anymore. It didn’t start out that way, but it’s become that. It’s the collection of record that people use and cite and compare. It’s a tremendous historical resource.”

Preserving the evolution of political campaigns is important to anyone trying to do research or understand political trends over time, said David Almacy, president and chief executive officer of Far Post Media, a digital public affairs firm in Virginia and former White House E-Communications Director for President George W. Bush. In 1996, campaign websites were primarily online brochures – just text and photos without much customization. Today, websites are more advanced with video, digitally integrated with interactive elements that can be tailored to the user.

“The value is to provide an archive and a record of what was said, and basically a snapshot in time politically,” Almacy said. “It actually becomes fascinating to go back and look at the issues that were facing the country that would be deemed priorities in 1996 and how that compares to today. I assume a lot are the same – the economy, education, immigration, national security, global peace – but they’ve evolved in different ways. Many are very important to Americans, just as they were back then.”

Shut Out by Distributors, Filmmaker Turns to Internet Archive to Share Documentary with the World

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Still from Hacking at Leaves (2025).

After Johannes Grenzfurthner began working on a new documentary in 2020, he soon realized that his original storyline was much more complicated than he first envisioned.

The 50-year-old Austrian filmmaker started researching what he thought was a valiant tale of hackers in Colorado who helped craft medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic for people across the Four Corners region (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona), including many members of the Navajo Nation. But as he learned about the disparate impact of the health crisis on the Native American people, he felt compelled to include elements of the United States’ colonial past in the film.

Hacking at Leaves Movie Poster
Watch Hacking at Leaves on the Internet Archive.

Hacking at Leaves is a 108-minute documentary that incorporates both story lines into an innovative film that Grenzfurthner said “does not fit into a tidy box.”

As an unconventional documentary, he said, it was difficult to land a distributor. So, after a year of trying and failing to secure a commercial release, the filmmaker took a completely different approach: on August 29, 2025, Grenzfurthner published the documentary on the Internet Archive for free public viewing and download.

“It’s free and open, and everyone can see it,” he said. “I have the Internet Archive on my side. At least now I know it will be online. It won’t be deleted, and it will not be censored.”

Having completed and successfully distributed three horror films, Grenzfurthner knew how to find distributors. Unfortunately, he said, the task is more challenging with documentaries, which don’t have a built-in genre fan base.

Initial reviews and audience feedback on Hacking at Leaves was encouraging.

In Europe, it premiered at the Diagonale Film Festival in Austria in April 2024 and was featured at the Ethnocineca film festival in Vienna. It debuted in the U.S. at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City in July and was screened at the Internet Archive in March 2025.

Yet, Grenzfurthner didn’t have luck getting it shown at big-name festivals, such as Sundance, which hurt its chances with distributors. Many, he said, are looking for stories with an uplifting story arc and his film didn’t align with that formula.

“There are no heroes in this story. There are only victims,” Grenzfurthner said. “If you have a documentary without a clear hero, without an invigorating, positive story that gives people a little bit of hope, certain film festivals and certain distributors are not interested in it anymore.”

Watch Hacking at Leaves on the Internet Archive

Still, he was determined for audiences to see his art. After a frustrating year of trying to sell Hacking at Leaves, Grenzfurthner decided to release it for free on the Internet Archive. Having received a grant from the Austrian government to make the film, the project’s costs were covered, which helped with his decision.

Since the 1990s, Grenzfurthner has published under the label he started – monochrom – which has been a foundation for his artistic and activist work. He’s produced in many mediums, but Grenzfurthner said he’s found film to be the most accessible and emotional way to get his messages out. Ultimately, in opting for free streaming via the Internet Archive, Grenzfurthner said he wanted the film to be viewed by as many people as possible.

The decision to release on the Internet Archive was made in collaboration with the film’s editor, Sebastian Schreiner, and co-producers Jasmin Hagendorfer and Günther Friesinger.

Johannes Grenzfurthner at Art & History Museums Maitland (2023). Photo credit: Jasmin Hagendorfer, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Not only was the Archive the film’s eventual distribution platform, it was also a source of materials when Grenzfurthner was researching the documentary. He used it to find reviews of old films and historical items about the Navajo Nation to feature in his work. Grenzfurthner said he values the resources available and the service it provides for digital preservation.

“People believe that the internet doesn’t forget things, but it forgets stuff all the time. You have to take active care that your stuff is out there,” Grenzfurthner said. In his creative process, he says it’s enormously helpful to have past cultural artifacts to learn from and build upon.

“The Internet Archive is growing and growing with petabytes of data and it’s an important institution,” Grenzfurthner said, “because it tries to guarantee the possibility to get your hands on culture that you can’t find anywhere else.”

He added: “I know having my film on the Internet Archive also means it will be around as long as the Internet Archive is around.”

Calling All Libraries: Celebrate 1 Trillion Web Pages Archived with the Internet Archive

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The Internet Archive has released a new resource guide to help libraries join in commemorating a once-in-a-generation milestone: 1 trillion web pages archived by the Internet Archive and available for use via the Wayback Machine. This historic achievement represents a collective effort to preserve our shared digital history, and libraries have been at the heart of that work from the beginning. The resource guide provides background on why this milestone matters to libraries, highlights their role in safeguarding online knowledge, and offers ready-to-use materials to help libraries celebrate with their communities.

Explore the resource guide

Within the resource guide, libraries will find social media templates, visuals, event ideas, and impact stories showcasing how institutions across the world are preserving local digital heritage. From creating “Then/Now” displays using Wayback Machine captures to hosting talks on web preservation, the resource guide offers fun, flexible ways for libraries to engage. As the Internet Archive reaches the 1 trillion milestone, libraries everywhere are invited to celebrate their connection to the web’s memory, and to the global mission of preserving knowledge for generations to come.

Happy College Radio Day! Explore Student Radio’s Past and Present in the DLARC College Radio Collection

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The 15th annual World College Radio Day takes place on Friday, October 3, 2025, with stations from around the globe celebrating and bringing attention to student radio as an enduring form of media. The first licensed college radio stations launched in the United States in the 1920s and since that time student radio practitioners have been innovators in technology, music discovery and radio programming.

By nature, radio has traditionally been an ephemeral endeavor, with many shows never recorded and lost to the ages. While some stations meticulously save paper materials like internal newsletters and promotional materials sent by bands and record labels, many others regularly purge these bits and pieces of day-to-day operations. College radio has added challenges due to ever-changing groups of students, tight budgets and space constraints. In light of these factors, many college radio stations aren’t able to save and archive as much as they would like.

Spring 1988 DJ Comment book from Mount Holyoke College’s radio station WMHC. Source: DLARC College Radio (digitized from the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections Repository)

The Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications launched a dedicated college radio collection in February 2024 in an effort to preserve the materials associated with college radio culture. It now contains over 9,000 items from student radio stations and student radio trade organizations from across the United States and Canada. The wide-ranging collection includes radio station flyers, music charts, playlists, zines, program guides, organizational documents, correspondence, meeting notes, recordings of artist interviews, oral histories, scholarly articles, clippings, photos, training manuals, scripts, magazines and more. It is especially exciting to me that these items now exist in a central place online, so that college radio fans, participants, scholars and alumni can search and find materials from a variety of stations.

Recent additions to DLARC College Radio include college radio collections from Haverford College, Mount Holyoke College, Lehigh University and Virginia Commonwealth University. We have also added program guides/zines from several campus and community radio stations in Canada, including CiTR Discorder (from 2009 to 2023), CFUV Offbeat Magazine (1986-2002) and various CKUT program guides and magazines.

Cover of May 1946 issue of IBS Bulletin. This was a publication produced by Intercollegiate Broadcasting System. Source: DLARC College Radio/Samuel T. Arnold Papers (OF.1CA.A2), Box 7, Folder 112, Brown University Archives

We have been regularly adding items to DLARC College Radio from Yale University’s archives, including materials from Yale’s independent student radio station WYBC and from The Ivy Network. Formed in 1947, The Ivy Network was initially started by members of college radio stations at Ivy League schools, including those at Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. The Ivy Network was “designed to further the aims and purposes of the member stations, to gain the advantages which the free exchange of information, ideas, and advice will bring, and to obtain advertising on a national scale,” according to its policy document.

In honor of College Radio Day, we invite you to explore and contribute to the growing collection of student radio materials in DLARC College Radio on the Internet Archive.

Here are some highlights:

The Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. DLARC invites radio clubs, radio stations, archives and individuals to submit material in any format. To contribute or ask questions about the project, contact: Kay Savetz at kay@archive.org. Questions about the college radio sub-collection can be directed to Jennifer Waits at jenniferwaits@archive.org.

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising at the Internet Archive

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Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising allows donors to create their own page and garner donations in support of the Internet Archive. Every donation is tax-deductible, and 100% of all gifts raised directly support ongoing Internet Archive initiatives. Follow the steps below to get started:

1. Go to donate.archive.org/1T

Click “Become a Fundraiser” and choose how you’d like to participate:

– As an Individual – Raise funds on your own.
– Join a Team – Support a specific initiative or a friend’s team.
– Create a Team – Start a group fundraiser.

2. Set up your fundraising page

– If you don’t have a GoFundMe Pro account, you’ll be prompted to create one.
– Add a short headline like “Help Protect Vanishing Culture” or “Support Universal
Access to Knowledge.”
– You can create a custom short URL to make sharing easier (optional).

3. Manage your page

Once your page is live, go to the person icon > “My Profile” to view & manage it.

4. Share!

Share your page with friends, family, and with your social media community. Help us preserve web pages, movies, books, music, and so much more.

Guidelines

To keep our campaigns mission-driven and transparent, all pages must:
– Clearly connect to the Internet Archive’s work
– Reflect our values of openness, inclusivity, and respect

Pages may be removed if they:
– Fundraise for causes unrelated to the Internet Archive
– Lack clarity or appear misleading
– Redirect away from our platform via QR codes or links
– Seek personal or self-interested fundraising

Thank you for supporting the Internet Archive!

Rural Libraries Receive Support from the Internet Archive to Preserve Community Stories

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Public librarians are shaping the future of the historic record. As experts in community knowledge dedicated to serving local information needs, these librarians are uniquely positioned to preserve and provide access to their community’s stories. Since 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program has provided training, support, and services to empower public libraries to preserve local digital heritage. 

For rural public libraries, this crucial work may be particularly challenging. While a range of cultural heritage institutions may play a role in local preservation initiatives focused on larger communities, the public library may be the only organization engaging in this work in a rural area. Resource constraints, however, make it difficult for rural libraries to take on new initiatives and they may lack access to tools, training, and technology to support these efforts. Yet documenting how history is happening in these communities is essential for ensuring a more complete historic record. Without participation from rural libraries, these local stories may go untold, unheard, and undocumented.

Librarians from rural and small librarians across the country gathered in Albuquerque for a workshop hosted by Internet Archive’s Community Webs program.

In response to these challenges and opportunities, Internet Archive has recently focused on recruiting rural libraries into the Community Webs program, providing them with access to web archiving and digital preservation services as well as training and support at no cost. On September 20th, a group of these program members from across the country came together to learn about practical methods and accessible resources that can be used to document, preserve, and share local history in rural communities. Hosted in conjunction with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the event was an opportunity for participants to work with Internet Archive staff and their peers from similar institutions to develop plans for implementing community-focused preservation initiatives. 

A screenshot from a website captured by workshop participant Belen Public Library. Belen, New Mexico is south of Albuquerque with a population under 8,000.

Over the course of the workshop, participants learned strategies for developing community partnerships, providing access to digital collections, and ensuring long term preservation of digital assets. Participatory preservation initiatives such as community scanning days and oral history programs were also covered. Particular attention was paid to the preservation of web-based local content. From the websites of community organizations to local news sites to neighborhood blogs, web archiving is critical for libraries working to preserve their community’s story as it unfolds. Attendees learned how to use Archive-It to both preserve and provide access to web archive collections. They then brainstormed about what local online information possessed enduring value for their current and future community members. Many attendees cited local newspapers that had moved to online-only distribution, town or county government webpages, and online information about community resources and services as content they would include in their web archives. 

Internet Archive will continue to offer support through the Community Webs program for these libraries as they take what they learned in this workshop and begin to apply it locally. Thank you to the Mellon Foundation whose support allows our team to host events like this and continue to expand the Community Webs program. We also wish to thank all of the libraries that participated in our recent workshop:

Asotin Public Library (Washington), Belen Public Library (New Mexico), Cairo Public Library (New York), Charlotte Public Library (Vermont), Dodge Center Public Library (Minnesota), Hillsboro Community Library (New Mexico), Holbrook Public Library (Massachusetts), Jemez Springs Public Library (New Mexico), Kendall Young Library (Iowa), Middlebury Public Library (Indiana), Milltown Public Library (New Jersey), Mount Pleasant Public Library (Texas), Randolph County Public Libraries (North Carolina), Salem-South Lyon District Library (Michigan), Scott County Library System (Iowa), Smithville Public Library (Texas), Sweet Home Public Library (Oregon), Van Horn Public Library (Minnesota), Westford Public Library (Vermont), and Yavapai County Free Library District (Arizona)

Interested in learning more about Community Webs? Explore Community Webs collections, read the latest program news, or apply to join!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee to Receive the 2025 Internet Archive Hero Award

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Celebrating 1 trillion web pages archived, the Internet Archive is proud to honor the visionary who made it all possible. As announced in The New Yorker, this year’s Internet Archive Hero Award will be presented to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, whose groundbreaking work opened the door to a connected world and laid the foundation for our shared digital history.

The Internet Archive Hero Award is an annual award that recognizes those who have exhibited leadership in making information available for digital learners all over the world. Previous recipients have included the island nation of Aruba, public information advocate Carl Malamud, copyright expert Michelle Wu, and the Grateful Dead.

Sir Tim’s invention transformed how humanity shares knowledge, and his ongoing advocacy for an open and accessible web that empowers individuals continues to inspire us. We’re thrilled to recognize his enduring contributions as we mark this historic achievement for the web.

Sir Tim will receive the Hero Award at an event in San Francisco on October 9, and will be celebrated from afar during the Internet Archive’s annual celebration on October 22, “The Web We’ve Built.”