Party-goers watch a film from

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For Natalie Orenstein, the event was a chance to see up close a resource that she uses regularly as a journalist in Oakland. She said she turns to the Internet Archive for local historical information and to see whether a group has sneakily changed its website or materials. Covering the recent election and tracking campaign financing, she said it’s also been useful to watch the political TV ads the Archive has preserved.

Orenstein said it was striking to see the archive of physical materials—especially since she thinks of Internet Archives as primarily a digital organization. “I respect that they value the original product, as well as its digitized form,” she said. “It’s only worth preserving if you value what it was originally.”

Indeed, for many, seeing the tangible artifacts makes archiving more real and motivates them to explore more of the collection.

Zoli Bassoff of San Rafael said he had not heard much special database the Internet Archive before coming to the event but likes the idea of having access to a variety of media. “I was interested in how they receive it, process, and get it on the internet. I wanted to learn about the process,and that was just as interesting as the actual media itself,” he said.


the Prelinger Archives that has been preserved and digitized.
In the special collections exhibit at the open house, Jennifer Waits, a podcaster and writer from San Francisco, was drawn to the old records and audio paraphernalia. She is involved with a project to curate a college radio collection as part of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications. Waits is reaching out to college radio stations to digitize playlists, program guides, the Journal of College Radio and other materials. Instead of going to individual campuses, this centralized digital collection will be a useful resource for historians and scholars.