Beatrice Murch

Internet Archive Europe Signs the Open Heritage Statement

/ / Public Domain

Internet Archive Europe (IAE) is proud to announce that we have officially signed the Open Heritage Statement, joining a global coalition of governments, institutions, and organisations committed to advancing equitable access to cultural heritage in the digital environment.

The Open Heritage Statement is a collective call for a future in which cultural heritage in the public domain is openly accessible, discoverable, and reusable for everyone. Developed collaboratively by organisations across more than 25 countries, it highlights the ongoing barriers that keep heritage locked away and outlines shared values and priorities to ensure that public domain heritage can be preserved, explored, and reimagined by all.

Why This Matters

At Internet Archive Europe, our mission has always been rooted in expanding access to knowledge. Openness is essential to supporting cultural participation, strengthening democratic societies, and enabling education, research, creativity, and innovation. Today, much of our shared heritage remains inaccessible online due to legal, technical, or resource-related obstacles. By adding our signature, we reaffirm our commitment to working with partners worldwide to overcome these barriers and help build a more inclusive digital cultural landscape.

A Shared Commitment

“Signing the Open Heritage Statement reflects Internet Archive Europe’s deep commitment to opening access to heritage and strengthening the cultural commons. This coalition demonstrates that meaningful change happens when institutions work together across borders — and we are delighted to contribute to this collective effort.”

 — Beatrice Murch, Internet Archive Europe

Our signature underscores the importance of collaboration and the belief that open heritage benefits everyone — from researchers and educators to artists, students, and the broader public.

Looking Ahead

We are equally excited to share that, following recent discussions, Internet Archive Europe will co-organise a joint Our Future Memory and Open Heritage event at the IAE Headquarters in Amsterdam on 2 March 2026. The event will bring together cultural heritage leaders, policymakers, and open knowledge advocates to discuss next steps for advancing equitable access to heritage across Europe and beyond. Planning for the programme and guest list will continue in the coming months, and we look forward to shaping this gathering with our partners.

Join the Movement

We invite governments, institutions, and organisations that share this vision to explore the Open Heritage Statement and consider adding their voice. Together, we can help ensure that heritage in the public domain truly serves the public good.

👉 Learn more and see the list of signatories at:
 https://openheritagestatement.org

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New Endorsements from Ireland: IReL and University of Galway Join the Our Future Memory Movement

/ / Digital Rights for Libraries

Our Future Memory continues to strengthen its voice in the academic world with major support from Irish institutions.

Internet Archive Europe is proud to announce that two more prestigious academic bodies have signed the Statement on the Four Digital Rights of Memory Institutions. These endorsements add critical weight to the call for a future in which libraries and universities can continue their mission of preservation and access in the digital age.

Our newest Irish signatories are:

  • The Irish Research e-Library (IReL)
  • The University of Galway

They join a rapidly expanding coalition of more than forty umbrella organisations and institutions worldwide that have endorsed the Four Rights: the Right to Collect, the Right to Preserve, the Right to Lend, and the Right to Cooperate.

University of Galway

The institutional support for this campaign has been endorsed by the Academic Council of the University of Galway.

Recognising the vital link between historical preservation and future learning, the University emphasised the necessity of these rights for the academic community. As stated in their endorsement:

“The University of Galway Library is proud to preserve and make accessible the scholarly and cultural record of centuries past. We are very concerned about any limitations to our ability to guarantee the preservation and accessibility of content produced today for scholars and learners of the future. We therefore whole-heartedly endorse the protection of our Digital Rights and the Our Future Memory campaign.”

Irish Research e-Library (IReL)

The Governance Committee of the Irish Research e-Library (IReL), a major nationally funded consortium, has also given its support to the Statement.

A copy of the statement was formally signed by the IReL Chair, Prof. Eeva Leinonen. This endorsement signals a strong commitment from Irish research infrastructure to ensure that digital content remains accessible and preserved for the long term, as emphasised below:

“As a national shared service providing access to digital information resources to students and researchers across Ireland, IReL is keenly aware of the precarious nature of information access in the digital world. The four rights outlined in Our Future Memory are essential if we are to work collectively to ensure access to scientific knowledge for future generations.”

A United Front for Digital Rights

These new signatures build upon recent momentum in Ireland, following the endorsement by the Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group (IUALG).

Together, these voices demonstrate a shared understanding within the academic sector: the problems facing memory institutions in the digital age are urgent, and legal protections are required to keep preserving and providing access to our cultural record.

Join the Movement

🔗 Sign the Statement: https://ourfuturememory.org
 📧 Contact the Campaign: campaigns@internetarchive.eu

Our future memory depends on the choices we make today.

Learn More

Informational Webinar on 27 January 2026

Join the Internet Archive and partners for “Protect Our Future Memory: Join the Call for Library Digital Rights,” a webinar introducing the movement.

  • When: 27 January 2026 – 19:00 GMT+1/ 10:00 PT / 13:00 ET
  • Duration: one hour
  • Format: online
  • Register here
Shop Talk @ the Ontario Library Association Conference on 30 January 2026

Discover the “4 Rights for Digital Libraries” at this 15-minute session at the OLA Conference in Ontario, Canada.

  • When: 30 January 2026 
  • Duration: 15 minutes
  • Format: in person
  • More info here
Podcast: Hear the Voices Behind the Movement

To explore the origins, urgency, and global significance of the Four Digital Rights, we encourage you to listen to the Future Knowledge podcast episode on this campaign. Featuring leaders from across the library, archive, and digital rights communities, the episode offers essential context on why these rights matter—and what’s at stake.

New Endorsements from Ireland: IReL and University of Galway Join the Our Future Memory Movement Read Post »

Three New Organisations Join the Our Future Memory Movement

/ / Digital Rights for Libraries

Our Future Memory continues to grow its global coalition defending memory institutions’ digital rights. Internet Archive Europe is proud to announce that three more organisations have signed the Statement on the Four Digital Rights of Memory Institutions, adding more voices to the call for a future where libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions can continue their mission in the digital age.

Our newest signatories are:

  • The Boston Library Consortium (BLC) – United States
  • Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group (IUALG) – Ireland
  • Library Futures – United States

They join more than forty umbrella organisations and institutions worldwide that have endorsed the Four Rights: the Right to Collect, the Right to Preserve, the Right to Lend, and the Right to Cooperate.

Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group – Ireland

The Irish Universities Association Librarians’ Group (IUALG), representing academic librarians across Ireland’s universities, brings a clear and urgent message about why these rights matter:

“The Irish Universities Association Librarians’ group is pleased to sign this statement. We, as academic librarians, affirm that people’s right to learn depends on libraries’ ability to collect, preserve, and provide access in the digital realm just as we have always done in the physical one. These principles are not aspirational; they are essential to safeguarding global knowledge for generations to come.”

Boston Library Consortium – United States

Representing twenty-six leading research libraries across New England, the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) strengthens the collective power of institutions committed to equitable access to knowledge.

As Executive Director Charlie Barlow states:

“BLC is proud to join institutions worldwide in defending our rights to collect, preserve, provide access, and cooperate. Libraries safeguard cultural memory—and online content shouldn’t be an exception.”

Library Futures – United States

Library Futures is a project of The Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law. Founded to build a more equitable digital future for libraries, Library Futures is a key advocate for balanced digital ecosystems and stronger public-interest infrastructures. Their endorsement reinforces the urgency behind securing the Four Rights for all memory institutions.

A Growing Global Movement

These endorsements continue a trend of rapid international alignment, including through translation initiatives ranging from French by the Internet Archive Canada to Papamiento and Dutch by the Biblioteca Nacional Aruba and Maarten Zeinstra from IP Squared.

Together, these voices demonstrate a shared understanding about the problems facing memory institutions in the digital age and the legal protections they need to keep preserving and providing access to our cultural record .

Join the Movement

🔗 Sign the Statement: https://ourfuturememory.org
 📧 Contact the Campaign: campaigns@internetarchive.eu

Our future memory depends on the choices we make today.

Learn More

Informational Webinar on 27 January 2026

Join the Internet Archive and partners for “Protect Our Future Memory: Join the Call for Library Digital Rights,” a webinar introducing the movement.

  • When: 27 January 2026 – 19:00 GMT+1/ 10:00 PT / 13:00 ET
  • Duration: one hour
  • Format: online
  • Register here
Shop Talk @ the Ontario Library Association Conference on 30 January 2026

Discover the “4 Rights for Digital Libraries” at this 15-minute session at the OLA Conference in Ontario, Canada.

  • When: 30 January 2026 
  • Duration: 15 minutes
  • Format: in person
  • More info here
Podcast: Hear the Voices Behind the Movement

To explore the origins, urgency, and global significance of the Four Digital Rights, we encourage you to listen to the Future Knowledge podcast episode on this campaign. Featuring leaders from across the library, archive, and digital rights communities, the episode offers essential context on why these rights matter—and what’s at stake.

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More Than Storage: On World Digital Preservation Day, AI is Helping Unlock Our Memories

/ / Public AI, Public Domain

On November 6th, we will join our partners and colleagues worldwide to mark World Digital Preservation Day. For us at Internet Archive Europe, this day is a reflection of our core mission. Our commitment is to “Universal Access to All Knowledge,” but what does that mean in practice?

Our collection isn’t just large; it’s on a scale that is hard to comprehend—petabytes of web history, millions of books, and vast audiovisual archives. The first challenge is preservation: saving this digital heritage from being lost to decay, obsolescence, or deletion.

But the second, and equally critical, challenge is access. How do we ensure this material is not just a digital tomb, but a living, useful library for researchers, historians, and the public?

This is where a powerful new partner emerges: Artificial Intelligence.

The “Humans of AI”: A New Perspective on Preservation

We believe AI is a critical tool for unlocking the knowledge buried within our vast digital stacks. That’s why we are so proud to support “Humans of AI,” a new 10-part documentary series from information labs.

This series moves beyond the headlines of disruption. It focuses on the real-world, human-driven projects where AI is being used to make our shared history more accessible, searchable, and understandable.

Activation, Not Just Preservation

This World Digital Preservation Day, we are focused on the challenge of activation. Preserving petabytes of data is one thing; making it discoverable is another. Without new tools, our digital history risks becoming inaccessible, lost in a sea of data.

The “Humans of AI” series tackles this problem head-on.

The series begins with a fantastic example: Transkribus, a platform using AI to do the seemingly impossible—transcribe centuries of complex, unreadable historical handwriting, turning it into searchable data.

But that’s just the first of 10 stories. Over its run, the series explores the breadth of this new field:

  • At Scale: You’ll see how national institutions like the National Library of Norway and pan-European platforms like Europeana are implementing AI to manage and share massive collections.
  • By Community: It highlights the open-source tools from platforms like Hugging Face and the vital community-building work of groups like AI4LAM.
  • New Interactions: The series shows how AI is creating entirely new ways to engage with culture, from chatting with 17th-century literature (Litte_Bot) to exploring complex ideas like Synthetic Memories and ClimateGPT.
  • Our Own Work: We are especially proud that the series will conclude with a look at our own work at Internet Archive Europe, showcasing how we use technology to make our vast web archives accessible.

A Global, Collaborative Effort

This series proves we are not alone in this mission. It highlights a vibrant, global community of librarians, archivists, researchers, and engineers working toward a common goal. This collaborative, non-profit spirit is the only way to tackle challenges this big.

This work is part of a larger, systemic shift. For a comprehensive look at how broad this field has become, we highly recommend exploring the AI Opportunity Inventory, a multi-stakeholder initiative hosted at the University of Texas School of Law. It’s a fantastic database that tracks public-interest AI projects, and it proves that this is a global endeavor.

At Internet Archive Europe, our goal remains clear: universal access. AI is proving to be an indispensable tool in that mission, helping us connect the past to the future. We invite you to watch “Humans of AI” to see what this future of preservation looks like in action.

You can find the first episode and subscription links on the information labs website.

Join Our Event in Amsterdam

But preservation isn’t just about algorithms; it’s about people, connection, and community. The web is not just a data set; it’s a “poetic” space built by individuals.

To celebrate this human side of preservation, we are organising a special event at our Headquarters in Amsterdam about the “Internet Phone Book”, a wonderful annual publication that features essays, musings, and a directory of personal websites, exploring the creative, human side of the web. This session will dive into how the world’s collective memory is being indexed and kept accessible, and how digital preservation connects people and knowledge across time. To join the event, please register here.

  • What: A presentation of the Internet Phone Book
  • With: Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliott Cost
  • When: Thursday, November 6th, 5:45 PM – 7:30 PM
  • Where: Internet Archive Europe HQ, Oudeschans 16, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland

Let’s work together to ensure our shared past remains a living resource for the future.

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Europe Joins the Celebration: 1 Trillion Web Pages Preserved for Future Generations

/ / Events, Public Domain

This autumn, the Internet Archive reached a milestone that belongs to all of us: 1 trillion web pages preserved through the Wayback Machine. That’s 1 trillion glimpses into our shared digital memory — from the early homepages of the 1990s to the voices of today’s communities across the world.

As the Internet Archive marks this extraordinary achievement on 22 October in San Francisco, we invite libraries, archives, and cultural institutions across Europe to celebrate their role in making the web’s history accessible to everyone.

A Global Mission Rooted in Local Efforts

When the Internet Archive launched in 1996 with the goal of “building a digital library for the future,” few could have imagined the scale of the mission ahead. Nearly three decades later, the Wayback Machine has become one of the most widely used digital preservation tools in the world, capturing billions of web pages every month.

Each of those pages tells a story — of innovation, creativity, culture, and community. And behind every snapshot lies the dedication of institutions committed to safeguarding knowledge.

Across Europe, libraries have been at the forefront of this work: archiving national domains, documenting local histories, and ensuring that the diverse voices of our continent are not lost to time.

Europe’s Role in Preserving the Web

European institutions have long been pioneers in digital preservation — from the UK Web Archive and Bibliothèque nationale de France to Netarkivet in Denmark and numerous national and university projects across the continent.

Their collaborative spirit mirrors the Internet Archive’s mission: universal access to knowledge. Together, they ensure that Europe’s web — multilingual, culturally rich, and constantly evolving — remains accessible to researchers, journalists, and citizens for generations to come.

Celebrating the Libraries That Keep Memory Alive

To help libraries and archives join in this once-in-a-generation milestone, the Internet Archive has released a Resource Guide filled with practical tools and ideas.

It includes ready-to-use materials such as:

  • Social media templates and visuals
  • Event ideas and workshop guides
  • Impact stories from institutions worldwide

Ways Your Library Can Celebrate

Explore your community’s digital history. And help us write the next chapter of the web’s story — one page at a time.

  • Share your favorite archived webpage using hashtag #Wayback1T.
  • Create a “Then/Now” image for your library’s web site using our free Canva template.
  • Record a short video answering the question: “Why is the Wayback Machine important to you?”

As we look ahead to the next trillion, Internet Archive Europe invites libraries, cultural heritage institutions, and communities to continue working together to preserve the web, celebrate digital memory, and keep knowledge alive.

Europe Joins the Celebration: 1 Trillion Web Pages Preserved for Future Generations Read Post »

Step Into the Dutch Web of the Past: Discover “Websites van Nederland” at the KB Until “Night at the Museum” on 11 October

/ / Events, Public Domain

On September 17th, we were proud to unveil a new way to interact with digital history at the KB, the National Library of the Netherlands. Our new interactive installation, “Websites van Nederland: explore the web of the past,” is now open to the public, offering a playful and profound journey into the Dutch internet archive.

The response has been fantastic, affirming our belief that this machine is more than just a tool. As we noted at the launch, it’s a tangible expression of our vision to place our collective memory directly at each individual’s fingertips, demonstrating how digital preservation is not about storing data in the abstract, but about making the richness of the past immediately usable, searchable, and alive.

A Universe of Dutch Culture

“Internet Archive Europe Open House, 19 September 2025” by Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY 4.0

The installation immerses visitors in a visual galaxy of 85,000 Dutch websites, drawn from over 1.2 million archived snapshots captured between 1996 and 2025. Using a physical joystick and buttons, visitors can fly through this vast digital universe, discovering the incredible diversity of the nation’s web landscape. The gamified experience encourages curiosity, while powerful voice search allows users to pinpoint specific topics or domains.

A Time Machine at Your Fingertips

Beyond exploring the sheer vastness of the archive, the installation is a powerful time machine. Visitors can select any website and instantly replay its history, flipping through archived versions to watch it evolve over the years. This feature makes the concept of a web archive tangible, showing how websites lived, breathed, and changed. To make the experience personal, a QR code lets visitors send any discovered website directly to their mobile phone to explore further.

A Blueprint for Europe’s Digital Heritage

While this first installation celebrates the Dutch web, it serves as a powerful blueprint for all of Europe. The technology and concept behind “Websites van Nederland” are designed to be adaptable. Imagine a “Websites of France” in Paris, or a “Websites of Italy” engaging visitors in Rome.

This is central to Internet Archive Europe’s mission. We aim to create engaging ways for citizens across the continent to connect with their own unique digital histories. This project shows that it’s possible to transform national web archives from static repositories into dynamic, interactive public experiences.

This is what “bringing collections to life” truly means. By connecting people with the traces of their own digital past, we empower them to understand the present and imagine the future. We believe this is essential work to ensure Europe’s digital memory is not only safeguarded, but also activated, accessible, and meaningful to all.

We invite you to visit the KB and experience “Websites van Nederland” for yourself. The installation will be on display until 11 October, culminating in The Hague’s Museum Night. Come and play with the past!

Photo credits featured image: “Preserving Digital Sovereignty: Marleen Stikker & Brewster Kahle at the KB” by Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY 4.0

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