IA: A New Book, A Growing Crisis: Vanishing Culture

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Thanks to the Internet Archive’s Chris Freeland for sharing news of an important work, available for free digitally or at a small cost in print. Thanks Chris!

We tend to think of the internet as permanent, but the past few weeks have been a stark reminder of how fragile our digital record really is. As the Internet Archive releases its new book, Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record, the headlines tell a parallel story: legal challenges, platform restrictions, and growing pressure on tools like the Wayback Machine are actively limiting what can be preserved and accessed. This isn’t a future problem... it’s unfolding right now.

Drawing on examples from film, music, journalism, software, and the web, the report shows how access to digital materials is increasingly temporary and controlled, rather than durable and owned. For libraries, it offers both a warning and a call to action: without intentional preservation, vast swaths of today’s culture risk disappearing entirely.