Documentation of Culture

Websites such as ibiblio and the Internet Archive have a positive impact on the sharing of information and knowledge creation. It allows for the organic documentation of culture. The preservation and cataloging of information on the internet by a mutlitude of users including professionals and amateurs is an on-going experiment that shows many positive potentials. Previously history was written by the winner and the dominating society often destroyed information of the people they conquered. Allowing anyone with internet access an opportunity to document and index anything could result in the creation of a repository reflective of humanity and not just the privileged few. Downfalls of such a movement include the confusion generated from shear amounts of information along with issues related to validity and origins. Considerations of the quality of infrastructure and maintenance of such archives is important. Nonetheless just as cultural artifacts and products of folklore provide informal insight into civilizaition, public libraries and archives provide valuable content. These types of depositories offer an egalitarian approach to the preservation of knowledge in a way not previously achievable.