September 11 could be remembered as a day the Web's landscape was radically altered.
Websites went black. Hackers defaced sites with patriotic and anti-American messages. Businesses posted lists of employees reported missing, as well as donation information on corporate Intranets. Amateur journalists launched eyewitness accounts and impromptu tribute sites.
Now, a group of scholars are working with The Internet Archive and the Library of Congress to create an online archive of websites and Web pages responding to the attacks that they hope will provide a solid historical record of this transitory moment in time.
"We're creating something that people today, as well as 10, 20 and 50 years from now, will have access to," said Diane Kresh, director of public service collections for the Library of Congress.
The outpouring of online responses to the Sept. 11 attacks yielded perhaps the largest spike in Internet traffic yet, surpassing the 2000 presidential election last fall.
"What we saw happen in the first week after the attacks exceeded that," said Kirsten A. Foot, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Washington who is co-directing the project. "And it's continuing."
Project directors plan to publish the archive on Oct. 11, one month after the attacks. The collection has approximately 1,100 websites to date and researchers easily expect to add another 1,000 sites.
Volunteers from around the world are helping build the archive. Anyone with an Internet connection can contribute sites to the archive by clicking on an annotation tool link that they can drag to the toolbar in their browser. The "Note This" function will allow them to categorize the website and detail their reactions.
"It's very much an open effort," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. "People are sending URLs that they find particularly worth being recorded in history."
Researchers are cataloging and categorizing various Web pages from official news websites to government, military, corporate, advocacy groups and relief organizations.
The archive will also give a voice to individual citizens and websites produced outside the United States that might not otherwise be visible.
"The wonderful thing about the Web is that it's the world's perspective," Kahle said. "It's a forum for understanding other points of view, not just traditional media."
"We think the Web allows a much broader spectrum of viewpoints to be expressed," Foot agreed. "That's something that the national media may not be able to do."
This isn't the first attempt to record the online reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Contentsummit and Interactive Publishing produced a collection of screen shots from over 160 news sites around the world on Sept. 11 and 12.
But unlike other portals dedicated to Sept. 11, the archive will present a "Web sphere" of sortable and searchable online information related to the events, Foot said.
Researchers will capture saved versions of websites as they have evolved over the days and weeks following the attacks. They hope to create an online collection that can be re-visited by users over time and will chronicle a new wave of civic activism.
"We would like for the archive to be informing public debate," Foot said. "(The attacks) created a broader-based movement of political action that's heating up online."
While most archives are created years after the fact, those involved in the project feel a sense of urgency to preserve material that is "born digital" and might otherwise be lost.
"There's an immediacy that you have to get it quickly or it's going to be gone," Kahle said.
"There are pieces of information out there that are ephemeral," Foot agreed. "If they're gone, they're not available for discussion and reflection."
But the changing nature of the Web makes it difficult for researchers to get a complete snapshot.
"Websites are not meant to be put in a library," Kahle said.
"This isn't like a video camera," Foot agreed. "We don't have the capacity to continually capture websites. But it's a fairly reliable snapshot of how they change."
Ultimately, project directors hope the full archive will be publicly accessible through the Library of Congress to both individual citizens and scholars.
"Initially, we felt we had an obligation to start collecting material immediately," Kresh said. "And we'll continue because the story keeps changing."
"Storing digital data will be an issue that not just this library, but every library has to deal with."
As one of the Net's most prominent virtual librarians, Kahle emphatically agrees.
"As more and more of our culture turns into digital form, preserving our digital heritage will naturally migrate."
