Le site archive.org est-il sûr ?

***** will figure in the permanent history of global civilization. It is one of the major Non-Profit/Non-Governmental Organizations in the field of the electronic preservation of the world's information resources, on par with the Library of Congress Memory Project and the European Digital Libraries Initiative. We should all be grateful that they have chosen to operate permanently as a non-profit organization. The result of this choice is evident (with respect to text materials, for example) in the impeccable scans and the high quality of associated metadata they produce. As an organization like Google, by contrast, blunders into this ocean as a commercial entity with their Google Books project, the quick and very dirty material they have amassed is a testament to the damage that can be done by the slavish obsession with the bottom line that is the hallmark of any for-profit enterprise. The quality of their product naturally must sink to the lowest grade the market will bear. And since the books themselves are free -- simply fodder for the advertising and bait to attract customers to the higher-quality, publisher-produced scans offered at a price -- the market will bear the absolute rock-bottom, with many unreadable pages, and scans of operators' hands in places obscuring the cheap, fax-quality text. Organizations like *****, whose principal concern is the permanent preservation of knowledge and culture, are bound to produce higher quality materials that will serve their purpose much more favorably as scholars and readers make use of them today, and for centuries to come. Archive.org is a vast global treasure trove that will play a substantial role in preserving the cultural record traditionally contained in physical books on library shelves through this pivotal era of permanent change to a digital information society.

The archiving of the web is a daunting task and, while not perfect for obvious reasons, the Web Archive via the WayBack Machine shows how a long-term website can evolve. It's my place for research into information that was previously published upon websites that got lost within the shuffle onto newer servers. And you'd think that some websites today would have long-term archives that are easily accessible. This fills that gap. This site is as safe as the sites it archives. Be careful as always while surfing.