Want to watch history being preserved in real time?
The Internet Archive, the digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts, has started livestreaming on YouTube from its scanning center in California for anyone to watch.
Monday through Friday, from 10:30 a.m. ET to 6:30 p.m. ET, viewers can tune in and watch live as fragile film cards are turned into searchable public documents, soundtracked to relaxing lo-fi beats. This work is part of Democracy’s Library, a global initiative to digitize and make publicly available millions of government records.
“This livestream shines a light on the unsung work of preserving the public record and the critical infrastructure that makes democracy searchable,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “Transparency can’t be passive—it must be built, maintained, and seen. That’s what this livestream is all about.”
If you’re confused about what exactly you’re watching on the livestream, scanning operators are specifically working with documents on microfiche, a flat piece of film containing microphotographs of the pages of documents. This format dates back to the mid-20th century and has been used to archive newspapers, court documents, government records, and more.
“The livestream features five active microfiche digitization stations, with a close-up view of one in action,” Chris Freeland, the Internet Archive’s director of library services, explains in a blog post on the site. “Operators feed microfiche cards beneath a high-resolution camera, which captures multiple detailed images of each sheet. Software stitches these images together, after which other team members use automated tools to identify and crop up to 100 individual pages per card.”
“Each page is then processed, made fully text-searchable, and added to the Internet Archive’s public collections—complete with metadata—so that researchers, journalists, and the general public can explore and download them freely,” the blog post adds.
This livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, a software engineer and app developer. She is also behind the 24/7 livestream of a Waymo parking lot that went viral last year.
In off hours, the Internet Archive livestream turns into a stream of silent films and historical images from NASA to keep viewers entertained. There is also a live chat. “This is such a good vibe to work on research,” one viewer commented.
“I hope your work is as mysterious and important as this,” Tung replied.
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