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The Internet Archive has taken on the monumental task by becoming the official custodian of the Aruba Collection, a digital repository for Aruba’s National Library, National Archives, and several other cultural institutions such as an archaeology museum, and the University of Aruba.

The collection now boasts 101,376 items, nearly matching the island’s population, comprising 40,000 documents, 60,000 images, and seven 3D objects.

Better known for preserving online content lacking official guardianship, the Internet Archive’s venture into safeguarding an entire nation’s heritage marks a significant deviation from its mission to maximise online information accessibility.

“What makes Aruba unique is they have cooperation from all the leading cultural heritage players in the country,” says Chris Freeland, the Internet Archive’s director of library services. “It’s just an awesome statement.”

The idea for the Aruba Collection was set in motion in 2018, after Archive employee, Stacy Argondizzo, whose family vacationed on the tiny Caribbean Island every July, began to wonder if she could help preserve Aruba’s history.

The island has a turbulent past, and its archives contain artefacts ranging from sunny vintage postcards to books about the nation’s role in the slave trade and Venuzuela’s oil boom. Although Aruba is relatively safe from hurricanes, the threat of what a severe storm or other extreme weather could do to its physical archives made Argondizzo nervous.

“They were one disaster away, basically, from losing everything.”

Argondizzo reached out to Peter Scholing, an information specialist at Aruba’s National Library. What started as a brief tour of the library turned into a marathon conversation. “We just hit it off,” says Argondizzo.

“We ran into a lot of roadblocks before we stumbled upon the Internet Archive,” Scholing says. Archival work can be labour intensive—it’s not easy to turn stacks of dusty tomes and fragile decades-old newspapers into easily searchable files. The budget for digitisation, he says, was “shoestring,” making the scope of the project daunting, especially for a country of around 110,000 people.

While Aruba had its own scanning equipment for the project, the Internet Archive provided the crucial software to manage the extensive collection. This included advanced algorithms capable of interpreting handwriting, which transformed centuries-old handwritten notes into digital text.

The Internet Archive has never previously acted as custodian of a country’s whole collection, although it has worked with several national and regional libraries around the world.

Back in 2011, it partnered with the Culture Office of Bali, an island province of Indonesia, to preserve 90% of Bali’s literature. Aruba’s archivists now hope other vulnerable nations will follow in its digital footsteps.

“When we think about digital preservation, we often think of the technical challenges. But I think the biggest challenges are the social challenges, the human challenges. How can you set up an organization that will be here in 50 years?”

Once again, the internet has, and is, the answer. After all, what’s on the internet, lasts forever.

If you want to delve into Aruba’s massive archival collection, you can power up with RSAweb and their massive fibre sale currently on. Whether you’re streaming series, catching up with faraway friends, or perusing Aruba’s National Library archives, they’ve got the right fibre-to-the-home package for you.

[source:wired]