That same year, a letter arrived from Washington, D.C., with the Smithsonian our blog Institution’s iconic sunburst logo at the top. The Smithsonian had agreed to partner with the Internet Archive to preserve the digital record of the 1996 U.S. presidential election.
“It was a major milestone for us,
” recalls Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. “The big Smithsonian was working with this new little Internet Archive nonprofit library.”
Together, the two institutions launched Web Archive 96, one of the first web collections the Internet Archive ever created. It captured the early campaign webpages of candidates Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Ross Perot — online brochures filled with policy positions, photos, and promises — along with news coverage of the race. It was a pioneering effort to preserve the political life of a nation as it moved onto the web. The collection is now a foundational part of our cultural history on the web, and is available for public access via the Wayback Machine.
Explore Web Archive 96 via the Wayback Machine
Nearly thirty years later, that collaboration still stands out as visionary: two institutions, one old and one new, working together to recognize the internet as part of our shared cultural record.