Look back... look way back

As long humans have exchanged knowledge, there have been efforts to preserve information and destroy information. Whether the format has been clay, parchment, paper, or digital, archives have played key roles in preserving information. In many societies, oral histories, handicrafts, and other art have also served as ways to preserve information such as historical events, instructions for important skills, and treaties between nations. This preservation is so important that in times of war and political upheaval, it becomes the target for interference whether physically or financially.

There are limitations to how well we can preserve information. Each human perspective is different, and no one effort can capture each individual experience. Archives have a finite physical capacity with limited space for items. For digital information, changes in formats and degradation are both challenges. Oral histories can be lost through genocide.

The decision on what to keep affects who is represented in our information ecosystem. The information in archives often neglects marginalized or oppressed groups. Modern archives have made strides to try and correct this, with special attention being given to reflecting the experiences and histories of Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ people, Black Americans, and others who have been harmed by colonialism and imperialism.

While the internet and world wide web both promised access to the entirety of human knowledge, early on the problem of losing that information needed to be grappled with. With websites being able to be edited and deleted with ease, where was the ability to be able to go back and look at previous versions – information that could be completely lost? In 2001, the Wayback Machine was launched by the Internet Archive to help solve this problem.

The Wayback Machine (which is a nod to the Rocky and Bullwinkle segment, Peabody’s Improbable History) uses a program called a web crawler that essentially takes a snapshot of as many websites as it can. Since it started, over 900 billion websites have been archived by the Wayback Machine and can be searched from Archive.org. If you are searching for a website that no longer exists or want to see how information has been changed on a website, you are very likely to find it using the Wayback Machine.

Since Donald Trump was elected to his second term as President of the United States, he has issued a flurry of executive orders that have involved key government agencies, including the USDA, FDA, and CDC, being directed to remove certain information from their websites. This has included information on transgender health, gender affirming care, climate change, and communicable diseases such as bird flu and HIV. While many of these websites were restored through a federal court order, some websites with information geared toward LGBTQ+ people have been published with a notice regarding the Trump administration’s decidedly non-scientific stance on those subjects.

While such information can be found elsewhere – government and non-government organizations around the world also publish information on these topics – none of this information is researched and created in a national bubble. Subject experts at US government agencies have historically cooperated with other agencies worldwide to research topics for the public good and contribute to guidelines and best practices around them. As well, US government agencies provide information particularly relevant to the citizens of the United States. Someone in California trying to find information on bird flu in their area aren’t going to be well-served visiting the Public Health Agency of Canada’s webpage on the topic. The vandalism of this information by the Trump administration has consequences both in the US and worldwide.

Another project the Internet Archive is involved in is the End of Term Web Archive Project. Since 2004, the EOT has archived US Government websites as new administrations take office. It’s not unusual for governments to change web content from administration to administration. In the best-case scenario, the EOT helps maintain a historical record of those changes. With the current situation in the US, it has become crucial to be able to view previous versions of important websites that have been targeted because of a political or ideological vendetta. The EOT’s efforts mean that as many snapshots of these websites as possible are available on the Wayback Machine.

Thankfully, similar efforts have been made in Canada using the Wayback Machine, and our own Library and Archives Canada also hosts a Government of Canada Web Archive. What is happening right now in the US should remind us all of the importance of preserving digital information. Suzanne Nossel wrote in Foreign Policy Magazine, “The eraser is a key tool of autocrats,” and, “In the ongoing struggle against authoritarianism, memory is an essential asset.” Preserving digital archives will continue to be an important cornerstone today’s fight for democracy, including here in Canada.

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Correction log

An update:

Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe. 2025. Jason Koebler. (404 Media) Accessed 2025/03/05.

RestoredCDC.org. Accessed 2025/03/05.

Removal of pages from CDC website brings confusion, dismay. 2025. Chris Dall. (CIDRAP) Accessed 2025/03/05.

'The Bigotry Is Astounding:' Engineers Waste Time and Money Scanning .Gov Sites for 'Transgender' and Other Terms. 2025. Emanuel Maiberg. (404 Media) Accessed 2025/03/05.

Judge Orders CDC and FDA to Restore Pages Removed by Trump Admin Before Midnight. 2025. Samantha Cole. (404 Media) Accessed 2025/03/05.

Trump Admin Adds Note Rejecting ‘Gender Ideology’ on Sites Court Ordered Them to Restore. 2025. Emanuel Maiberg and Jason Koebler. (404 Media) Accessed 2025/03/05.

The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports. 2024. Zoë Schlanger. (The Atlantic) Accessed 2025/03/05.

USDA ordered to scrub climate change from websites. 2025. Zack Colman and Marcia Brown. (Politico) Accessed 2025/03/05.

Don’t Let Autocrats Erase the Internet. 2025. Suzanne Nossel. (Foreign Policy) Accessed 2025/03/05.

Announcing the Data.gov Archive. 2025. Library Innovation Lab. (Harvard Law School Library) Accessed 2025/03/05.

The ‘Wayback Machine’ is preserving the websites Trump’s White House took down. 2025. Matthew Kaufman. (CNN) Accessed 2025/03/05.

End of Term Web Archive (EOT). Accessed 2025/03/05.

Internet Archive. Accessed 2025/03/05.

Government of Canada Web Archive. Accessed 2025/03/05.