On the heels of June's Stonewall Month celebrations, the Atlanta Pride Committee is pleased to announce that the United States Library of Congress has selected our website for inclusion in the Library's historic collection of Internet materials related to the LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive. The Library of Congress made the Atlanta Pride Committee aware of their decision in mid-June. It noted that, "we consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record."
The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions include acquiring, cataloging, preserving, and collecting historical materials that foster education and scholarship. These materials extend to digital content, including websites, which are important because they contribute to the historical record, archiving important social information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the web as an influential medium, records of historical events could be considered incomplete without materials that were "born digital" and never printed on paper.
Steven Igarashi-Ball, the Director of Equity and Engagement for the Atlanta Pride Committee, had this to say about being selected for the archive: "Our mission statement is built on advancing the unity, visibility, and wellness of our local LGBTQ+ community, and our online platforms are a large part of preserving our historical presence. We have a long history of supporting local and national archives by donating to and preserving newspapers, magazines, photographs, and other ephemera. It is nice to see that tradition continue in the digital age, ensuring that our stories will continue to be preserved for generations to come."
The archive will preserve the Atlanta Pride Committee's URL and other portions of their site, including public content that their page links to on third-party social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Library of Congress will engage the collection of content from these sources at regular intervals and may include them in future exhibitions. The Library will make this collection available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement.
The Library may also make the collection more broadly available by hosting it on the Library's public access website no earlier than one year after the archives have been published. To view the current web archives, visit https://www.loc.gov/websites/. You can also learn more about the Library's Web Archiving program goals at https://www.loc.gov/programs/web-archiving/.