Wayback Machine

We have so many tools available to us as analysts that it is easy to forget resources that we do not use often. For me, one of these resources was the Wayback Machine, which is run by The Internet Archive. It provides the ability to access historical web pages. The url is: https://archive.org/web/

There is also an interesting feature on the web page that may be of use that allows one to submit a url and "capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future."

"The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.

We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 450+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.

As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:

330 billion web pages

20 million books and texts

4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts)

4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs)

3 million images

200,000 software programs

Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections."