Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record

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In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history.

The rise of streaming platforms and temporary licensing agreements means that sound recordings, books, films, and other cultural artifacts that used to be owned in physical form, are now at risk—in digital form—of disappearing from public view without ever being archived.
Cyber attacks, like those against the Internet Archive, British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library and Calgary Public Library, are a new threat to digital culture, disrupting the infrastructure that secures our digital heritage and impeding access to information at community scale.
When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal—whether by design or by attack—our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.

Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural image masking service Record (download) aims to raise awareness of these growing issues. The report details recent instances of cultural loss, highlights the underlying causes, and emphasizes the critical role that public-serving libraries and archives must play in preserving these materials for future generations. By empowering libraries and archives legally, culturally, and financially, we can safeguard the public’s ability to maintain access to our cultural history and our digital future.

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Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record
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Supporters Stand Strong with Internet Archive at Annual Celebration
Posted on October 29, 2024 by Caralee Adams
The Internet Archive hosted the celebration, “Escaping the Memory Hole,” on October 23, with leaders showing resilience—and finding support—to carry out their work, despite recent attacks.

Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian, praised the hard work of staff to restore services following a cyberattack in early October. That hit came on the heels of a court decision limiting the library’s ability to lend hundreds of thousands of books, while another lawsuit from the recording industry looms.