The Web History Center Dr. Bill Pickett Presented at the NDIIPP conference Washington, D.C. June 2009

Our Goal : Create permanent public access to the sights, sounds, documents and programs that chronicle the origins and ongoing evolution of the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web has transformed the ways we use, store, and communicate information, with a societal impact possibly as large as that of Gutenberg’s printing press half a millennium ago. The WWW with seemingly limitless possibilities continues to evolve and expand. Yet much of its history is being discarded, and nobody has systematically tried to save it until now, The Web History Center aspires to preserve the learning and relevance of early Web development as an educational resource to support future Web use and development. Know the Past. Invent the Future.

Why Preserve Web History? Posterity: so that our descendants may understand their own history Pioneers: because those who have made history deserve appropriate recognition Progress: so that Web pioneers of tomorrow can learn from those today Protection: to establish and clarify intellectual property rights and avoid costly patent suits; to help firms leverage their own past accomplishments

What We Do Preserve: Collect at-risk historical materials from pioneers, distribute them to our archiving members for preservation Make Public: Make material public through our wiki timelines, and through events and exhibits with our members Collaborate: work with members to develop ways for the Web to record its own ongoing history, and to establish educational problems

Who We Are Many of today’s leading experts and institutions in the field: Pioneers of the Web and the history of technology Twelve institutional members Two host institutions: the Computer History Museum (CA) Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (IN) Representatives U.S., England, France, Switzerland

We are growing…with your help Our growth depends on new members Membership Qualifications A commitment to preservation & public access Active & ongoing participation in the WHC Advisory Board Members include: Web pioneers Historians & archivists Museums, universities, research institutes Corporations The Host Institutions Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Computer History Museum

Institutional Members Stanford University Libraries – History of Science and Technologies Collections The Internet Archive The International World Wide Web Conference Committee Charles Babbage Institute Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology CommerceNet The Computer History Museum SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SRI International Digibarn Center for History and New Media, George Mason University University of Maryland – Dot-Com Archive and Business Plan Archive

What Members Are Contributing We will protect and make public materials collected by members, including: E-Commerce history, WWW conference history – papers, data, and oral histories (Web History Center) Nearly all HTML pages since 1995 (Internet Archive) Video histories with pioneers – over 100 from (Marc Weber) Invention and very early development of the Web (private collections) Virtual worlds (Digibarn) Douglas Engelbart’s visionary work in hypertext and networking (Stanford, SRI) History of Mozilla (Center for History and New Media) Dot-com boom and crash (University of Maryland) The Web comes to America (SLAC)

We are currently working on… Curated Wiki timelines capturing the history of: e-Commerce International World Wide Web Conference Series Virtual worlds A federated archive to let users seamlessly call up multimedia material from any member’s collection Events and exhibits with members: November , internetworking anniversary with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn CommerceNet reunion, fall 2007

How Can You Help? Let us know about historic materials, especially if “at risk”. Ask your friends to do the same! Encourage your colleagues, company or institution to join Get involved: Share subject matter expertise Help us recruit board members and advisors Identify donors and corporate funding opportunities Help us build infrastructure and sustainability Suggest a sponsor for our Education Center… a highly visible naming opportunity ($5M - $12M level)

The Web History Center Dr. William B. Pickett Co-founder and Historian Web History Center Rose-Hulman Ventures 100 S Campus Dr. PO #3799 Terre Haute, IN USA Phone: (+1) Fax: (+1)