Archives refers to a collection of records, and also refers to the location in which these records are kept. Archives are made up of records which have been created during the course of an individual or organisation's life. In general an archive consists of records which have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation. Records, which may be in any media, are normally unpublished, unlike books and other publications. Archives may also be generated by large organizations such as corporations and governments. The highest level of organization of records in an archive is known as the fonds. Archives are distinct from libraries insofar as archives hold records which are unique. Archives can be described as holding information "by-products" of activities, while libraries hold specifically authored information "products". The word 'archives' is the correct terminology, whereas 'archive' as a noun or a verb is related to computer science. *

DevArchives - Contains archives of FAQs, mailing lists, and newsgroups all related to developer/programming/IT. Free.
Meta Description: [ Web Development archives, containing a multitude of information spanning FAQs, Mailing Lists, and Newsgroups. Search our archive for the answers you are looking for., ]
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First Monday: Internet Time and the Reliability of Search Engines - Journal article by Paul Wouters, Iina Hellsten, and Loet Leydesdorff. Examines the consequences and implications of internet search engines continuously reconstructing the past by updating their indices.
Meta Description: [ Search engines are unreliable tools for data collection for research that aims to reconstruct the historical record, making them undependable for scholarly research but also giving a view on the various presents and pasts living side by side in the Internet. ]
Ghost Sites - Long running online museum provides screenshots of defunct sites.
Meta Description: [ Ghost Sites of the Web: Where Dead Sites Live On... Where Web Disasters Are Still Fresh, Ghost Sites of the Web is the Net's only resource identifying and critiquing aging, abandoned, and derelict web sites. Compiled every several days by Steve Baldwin, Ghost Sites has been featured in Time Magaz... ]
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Google Groups - Searchable archive of more than 700 million Usenet postings from a period of more than 20 years.
NewsletterArchive.org - Aims to archive and make available to the public all email newsletters and electronic mailing lists. It will rely on user contributions for its content.
Meta Description: [ We archive and make available to the public all email newsletters and electronic mailing lists. Share your inbox with the world. ]
NoveltyNet - A site where people can submit orphaned content to be archived and kept available.
Meta Description: [ NoveltyNet preserves digital text and media that no longer has a home on the Internet ]
Searchenginewatch.com - It's Tough to Get a Good Date with a Search Engine - Article by Gary Price and Genie Tyburski. Explores the question of what is a date on the web? and notes that a searcher may be misled by the results of searches restricted by date.
Meta Description: [ Search engines have problems with calendar information. Bottom line: you may end up searching for dates in all the wrong places. ]
Textfiles - Contains information gathered from BBS's in the early days of the Internet.
The Internet Archive - Nonprofit organisation established to preserve Web sites by taking regular snapshots
The Register: The Web as Historical Record - Essay by Peter Abrahams pointing out one of the weaknesses of most search engines and the Web itself: you cannot sort by date.
The Register: Archive.org Suffers Fahrenheit 911 Memory Loss - Opinion piece by Ashlee Vance about how archive.org doesn't permanently save material the way most people believe it does.
The Register: Britain's Web Presence to be Saved - Announcement of the creation of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC).
The Register: Google, the Only Archive We'll Ever Need? - Opinion piece by Andrew Orlowski. Points out that Google can't always index, retrieve and/or sort everything in useful ways, but its supporters are overlooking these major drawbacks to using it as an archive.
UK Web Archiving Consortium - Creating an archive of culturally significant UK websites.
Web Design Timeline - Ten years of web design in an archive.
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