Culturally Significant

I began my last blog entry with the sentence “Today social media has become part of the fabric of our culture.” In a relatively short period of time social content on the web has become a significant element of our society.

A few days ago the Library of Congress announced it has acquiring the Twitter digital archives. These archives contain every tweet every posted since Twitter's inception in 2006 – every last tweet. This includes historic tweets – the first tweet ever, the first tweet from space, and President Obama's tweet about winning the 2008 presidential election – and all the other comments, ideas, and opinions posted by the millions of Twitter users around the globe.

But, saving these notable tweets is not the main motivation to preserve the archives in such a venerable institution. In their press release, the Library of Congress stated this data has “extraordinary potential for research into our contemporary way of life”. So, it is the everyday tweets that they want to save and study. It is these tweets that are a window into our daily lives – just as preserved journals and letters have been for former time periods.

This acquisition is part of the library's ongoing efforts to capture and archive materials from the internet. To date the library has collected over 167 terabytes of information from the web as part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Now, every tweet – significant, strange, embarrassing, or boring – will be added to that collection. Of course, the Library of Congress first posted this news on Twitter (click here to read their tweet).


This signifies the cultural importance of digital information and social media. In the past pieces of information which were deemed to be culturally significant included books, video and audio recordings, and important documents. But, today – in the Information Age – it is bytes not paper that hold the clues for future generations to understand who we are. So, keep tweeting and share your experiences with the world.