The critical window of shadow libraries
The critical window of shadow libraries
We can only expect these trends to continue to worsen, and many works to be lost well before they enter the public domain.
We are on the eve of a revolution in preservation, but “the lost cannot be recovered.” We have a critical window of about 5-10 years during which it’s still fairly expensive to operate a shadow library and create many mirrors around the world, and during which access has not been completely shut down yet.
If we can bridge this window, then we’ll indeed have preserved humanity’s knowledge and culture in perpetuity. We should not let this time go to waste. We should not let this critical window close on us.
Let’s go.
- Anna and the team
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What can an ordinary user do at this point that would help?
https://annas-archive.org/volunteering
Be aware that helping Anna's Archive may be illegal, or even criminal.
A different, more legal archiving effort is the Archive Team. It focuses on public data on the internet. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior
In some places without a strong freedom of information tradition (like the EU), this may still be illegal.
The archive team sounds interesting!
archive, archive, archive
got a 30tb library currently and every time a drive goes down we replace with a drive that is bigger
How do you decide what to archive, and what is the long term plan? If Annas goes down it can be pieced together again? Or is it served to users now too?