‘Contrary to popular belief, what goes online does not stay there forever’

We’re not archiving the digital age you know.

National libraries, archives and museums have always safeguarded our knowledge and heritage, and given people access to it. Physical documents, books and basically a copy of everything published in the State is collected and preserved by one or more institution.

There are 13 institutions listed as "legal deposit libraries" under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, of which the National Library of Ireland is one. The remainder include university libraries like Trinity College and UL, as well as libraries abroad including the British Library, and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales.

My Sound Off comes out of frustration about the delay in extending this legislation to include contemporary publication formats. By that I am mainly referring to Irish websites with a “dot ie” domain.

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Common narrative

The average life of any page online is around 100 days. So contrary to the common narrative, what goes online does not stay there forever.

The alarming loss of digital material means that we’re creating a black hole in our national memory. We are ensuring that huge difficulties will be faced in the future understanding of contemporary society.

Perhaps that means a lack of understanding of the narratives that surround a referendum campaign, or our response to centenary events.

One solution would be to allow the National Library of Ireland to sweep the dot-ie domain at regular intervals. Such a process would have to be mindful of the work of journalism or other work behind the pay wall.

Since 1996, Wayback Machine have been archiving the internet. In that time, 20 EU member states have put digital legal deposit schemes in place.

National libraries, archives and museums have always safeguarded our knowledge and heritage. We must allow them to do likewise in the digital age.

Fintan Warfield is a Sinn Féin Senator