C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A: www.unc.edu circa 1997

The UNC Libraries started a web archiving project in January 2013 (read more about that here), but the Internet Archive has been saving websites for much, much longer. In fact, they have saved over 366 BILLION web pages since 1996, accessible through the Wayback Machine.

In the Wayback Machine you can see an archive of UNC.edu since 1997, not to mention tons of other websites. Take a moment to search for some of your favorite websites and see what they looked like 10 (or more!) years ago. Not surprisingly, the Web has changed quite a bit since then.

Here is a snapshot of UNC’s homepage from April , 27 1997 featuring a very creative and informative acrostic linking to University departments and offices.

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Does anyone else think we should bring back the acrostic? What would your acrostic be?

Saving UNC’s Slice of the Web

Wayback banner
If you have ever stumbled across a webpage with this banner across the top of it, you’ve encountered the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine was developed by the Internet Archive in 1996 to start archiving the web, and since then it has collected around 240 billion web pages.

In 2006 the Internet Archive launched Archive-It, which is a hosted service that allows institutions to create their own web archives.

In January of 2013, the UNC Libraries began archiving websites in five different collections. These collections support existing collecting areas in the Libraries and include

You can browse all of our collections through Archive-It, and individual websites have been cataloged for access through the UNC Libraries’ catalog.

Additionally, websites that are part of existing archival collections are described in that collection’s finding aid. For example, you can see description of and get access to an archived version of the North Carolina Literary Festival’s 2009 website from the finding aid for the records of the North Carolina Literary Festival.

Here’s a snippet from that web site, showing the banner that Archive-It uses to let the viewer know that they’re looking at an archived web page.

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