Internet Archive, Digital preservation organization in Richmond, San Francisco
The Internet Archive preserves digital content inside a former Christian Science temple in the Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco. The facility stores billions of web pages, millions of books, and extensive audio, video, and software collections on servers within the renovated building.
Brewster Kahle founded the facility in May 1996 to preserve digital records of websites, books, and cultural materials. The organization moved into the converted temple in 2009 and expanded storage capacity continuously to keep pace with the growing volume of captured web content.
The organization runs open-source software used by researchers, journalists, and libraries to document disappearing web content. This collaborative approach enables communities worldwide to create their own digital archives and maintain local collections.
Access happens through the Wayback Machine for browsing archived versions of websites or the Open Library platform for books. Borrowing publications requires a free user account, while browsing web archives works without registration.
The facility's server rooms sit inside the historic church building, with modern cooling systems regulating the temperature of the digital storage units. Each day the system captures hundreds of millions of new web pages through automated crawlers, creating a continuous snapshot of the changing internet.
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