Internet Archive Now Livestreams History As It's Being Preserved

The Internet Archive has begun livestreaming its microfiche digitization center on YouTube, showcasing the real-time preservation of fragile film cards into searchable public documents. The work is part of Democracy's Library, a global initiative to digitize and share millions of government records. 9to5Mac reports: The livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, who previously gained attention for her viral robotaxi depot stream. Her new video explains how and why this new livestream project came together [...].

The livestream features five scanning stations at work, with one shown in close-up as operators digitize microfiche cards in real time. Each card holds up to 100 pages of public records. High-resolution cameras capture the images, software stitches and crops the pages, and the results are made text-searchable and freely accessible through Democracy's Library. Live scanning takes place Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PT, excluding U.S. holidays, with a second shift expected to begin soon.

Work is more important now than ever.

[chipperdog]

This work is more important than ever. A lot US public records are in the process of or will be destroyed by the current administration, so an independent archive of the data is invaluable..The only thing I would suggest is that they have a couple of non-US mirrors.

This is also why newspapers publishing public notices, birth, death, and other records independent of government is important..