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I love looking at public archives on the Internet. Whether for inspiration or learning, it’s amazing how much great content is made available… if you know where to look!
The internet is a great place for saving things. By turning the physical into digital, and disseminating it, we increase the chances that it won’t be lost. Throughout the world, Institutions, private companies and individuals are doing the essential work of preserving our common creations. Here are a few of my favorites.
Internet Archive Collections
First, the Internet Archive — many of you know the archive for their awesome Wayback Machine, but they also curate digital and scanned collections.
Play old school videogames
The Internet Arcade has great arcade games you can play online
Explore the space program
Nasa images and videos from most Nasa missions with amazing images such as this:
Watch detective movies
The film noir archive, highlighting detective and noir movies as part of the amazing movie collection of the archive
Enjoy great art
The Metropolitan museum of art images and galleries
Side note — Contribute!
Alongside Internet archive is Archive Team, an amazing team of rogue archivist, roaming the internet and archiving services before they disappear.
If you have a spare VM, help run an Archive Team Warrior. If you’re so inclined, donate to the archive’s efforts.
Other Archive Collections
I’m indebted to the amazing openculture for finding these on a day to day basis. They’re still my main source for finding new archive initiatives.
- Moma Exhibits Photos: Pictures of all the Moma Exhibit from 1929 onwards.
- Google Arts and Culture: Especially Street Art, Virtual Tours and High Resolution Artworks
- Flickr Commons: a searchable archive of the way we were, and in many ways still are.
- British Library Sound Archive: especially great animal recordings but also music and more
- David Rumsey Map Collection: I love maps. This collection provides an amazing tool called georeferencer, which allows you to overlay old maps on current world maps.
- The Sketchbook project archives more than 35000 sketchbooks, from a variety of artists. Includes some great travelogues and cute haikus
- NYPL Digital collections showcases amazing photographs, such as posters from the turn of the century, or pictures from immigrants arriving at Ellis Island
I’m in awe with what all this groups are doing to preserve our commons through time. Know of any cool public archive ? React and let me know.
In this series, I’m highlighting sources and initiatives that inspire me, and that I usually share with my team at Kumbu, where we’re building an archive for your personal stuff. If there is interest, I will share more of our inspiration over time.
