The Internet Archive just became an official U.S. federal library

[ownedbycats]

https://mashable.com/article/internet-archive

Note: The first comment on article notes the headline is inaccurate: "The Internet Archive did not become an official U.S. federal library it became an official federal depository library. They are two distinct designations."

Internet Archive — the no-cost, nonprofit digital library that has become embroiled in the nationwide battle over copyrights and free speech — is now an official source for government documents.

According to a new designation announced by California Senator Alex Padilla, the website will join a network of more than 1,000 libraries around the country tasked with archiving government documents for public view. Unlike other designated federal depository libraries, as they are known, the Archive is entirely online. The news was first reported by San Francisco's KQED, who spoke to both Padilla and Archive founder Brewster Kahle about supporting the mission of "universalizing" all knowledge through digitization — this includes, says Kahle, "helping integrate these materials into things like Wikipedia, so that the whole internet ecosystem gets stronger as digital learners get closer access into the government materials.”

[Quoth]

Slightly Crazy.

[slm]

Actually, this is useful. If you ever had reason to use a federal depositary library, you'll be glad there is an generally-available online one.

As the articles point out, Internet Archive does the back-end archiving for many other federal depositary libraries.

[issybird]

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