The Library of Congress is launching am ambitious effort to acquire and archive all public Twitter posts starting from the beginning of Twitter in 2006. It will collect more than 50 million Tweets a day and make them available to the public after a six-month period. -db
April 14, 2010
By Emily Long
The Library of Congress announced on Wednesday it will acquire and archive all public Twitter posts starting from the site’s inception in 2006.
The Library first announced the news via its @librarycongress feed. The archive will collect more than 50 million Tweets per day — billions in total. According to Twitter, the Tweets will be available for internal library use, noncommercial research, public display and preservation after a six-months.
“Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition,” wrote Matt Raymond, the Library’s director of communications, in a blog post. “I’m no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I’m certain we’ll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive.”
The Library’s blog was down for some time Wednesday afternoon, which a spokeswoman attributed to a curious public. Around the time of the announcement, the @librarycongress Twitter account also surpassed 50,000 followers.
One Comment
Using Twitter as an educational resource is quite an interesting idea. I’d like to have had this available in my days as a grad student, if nothing more than for a source of outrageous quotations.
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