2016-11-21: WS-DL Celebration of #IA20

.@WebSciDL celebrates 20 years of #webarchiving & @internetarchive w tacos and @djspooky CDs! #IA20 pic.twitter.com/AFb3qUiuzz

— Michael L. Nelson (@phonedude_mln) October 26, 2016

The Web Science & Digital Library Research Group celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the Internet Archive with tacos, DJ Spooky CDs, and a series of tweets & blog posts about the cultural impact and importance of web archiving.  This was in solidarity with the Internet Archive's gala which featured taco trucks and a lecture & commissioned piece by Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky). 

Normally our group posts about research developments and technical analysis of web archiving, but for #IA20 we had members of our group write mostly non-technical stories drawn from personal experiences and interests that are made possible by web archiving.  We are often asked "Why archive the web?" and we hope these blog posts will help provide you with some answers.

• Shawn blogged about archiving "fictional" web sites.  For examples, sites that are mentioned in TV shows and then set up in real life (tm) to support the shows. 
• Lulwah followed up her JCDL 2015 paper with a more personal note about which of her favorite Arabic language web sites were archived. 
• Mat described his time as an editor of the The Alligator, the student newspaper at the University of Florida.  
• Scott retold how he applied the results of his archivability research to better the design of a local acoustic music site that he maintains.
• Alexander, in anticipation of the 2016 election, examined the mementos for Fox News and CNN web sites for both the 2008 and 2012 US presidential elections. 
• Yasmin revisited how well archived are some of the sites, no longer on the live web, documenting the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.
• Sawood blogged about early Urdu language blogs and how they disappeared from the live web, Geocities-style. 
• Corren recounted the rise and fall of one of the first online universities, as captured by the Internet Archive. 
• Mohamed summarized the fate of various Libyan newspapers controlled by the government after the 2011 conflict in Libya. 
• Erika pulled some examples from the web archives of hacked pages from the 2013 cyber war between Indonesia and Australia. 

We've collected these links and more material related to #IA20 in both a Storify story and a Twitter moment; we hope you can take the time to explore them further.  We'd like to thank everyone at the Internet Archive for 20 years of yeoman's work, the many other archives that have come on-line more recently, and all of the WS-DL members who made the time to provide their personal stories about the impacts and opportunities of web archiving.

--Michael