The Library of Congress, in collaboration with the Internet Archive, webArchivist.org, and the Pew Internet and American Life Project, has commissioned a collection of digital materials from the Internet dealing with the September 11 attack. It can be found at September 11.archive.org. The archive will preserve the reactions to the attack by the press, institutions, corporations, and individuals.
LC staff have recommended Web sites to be included in the archive. “It is the job of a library to collect and make available these materials so that future scholars, educators, and researchers can not only know what the official organizations of the day were thinking and reporting about the attacks on America on September 11, but can read the unofficial, online diaries of those who lived through the experience and shared their points of view,” said Associate Librarian for Library Services Winston Tabb.
In a related project, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has called upon folklorists and ethnographers across the country to document the thoughts and feelings of average citizens in the days following September 11 through recordings. The center plans to collect and preserve the audio-taped interviews and other supporting materials, such as photographs of memorial tributes at various locations in New York and Washington, D.C.
Posted October 22, 2001.