Part of Our Culture is Born Digital - On Efforts to Preserve it for Future Generations

Abstract

The Internet has already established itself as one of the key information and communication media of our time. With Internet-specific types of information representation and art evolving, and with social groups forming in cyberspace, the Internet and its content is turning into an important part of our cultural heritage. This new digital cultural heritage is deemed worth preserving by an increasing number of initiatives, aiming at providing access to our contemporary Internet for future generations. Numerous challenges have to be addressed in the creation of any such archive, concerning the acquisition of data, its long term storage and preservation, as well as access provision. In this paper we provide an overview of the most prominent challenges encountered with respect to archiving the Internet and discuss possible solutions. We furthermore present a report on AOLA, the Austrian initiative of creating an on-line archive.