Thursday, November 14, 2013

Throwback Thursday: Using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

Ever wonder what some of your favorite or frequently visited websites looked like 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or even 15 years ago?  Take a moment to check out the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, available at http://archive.org/web/.  This tool provides snapshots of websites at various intervals, beginning in 1996.  If you're feeling especially nostalgic, try looking up the old versions of AOL.com.

While it can be a lot of fun to revisit the days of dial-up, the Wayback Machine can also be a serious research tool.  Remember that information found on websites is not static, and what is available today may be gone tomorrow.  In addition to taking its own snapshots, the Wayback Machine offers a tool that allows you to capture a web page at a particular point in time.

For some timely news on another project from the Internet Archive, see a recent post on the Law Librarians blog.

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