ELI5: How does the Internet Archive work?

The Internet Archive works like a giant digital photo album and public library that automatically takes snapshots of websites and saves old media so they are never lost.

Think about your favorite playground. Over the years, the swings might break, the slide might get repainted, or the whole park might turn into a parking lot. If you didn't take a photo, you might forget what it looked like. The same thing happens on the web: websites change, articles get deleted, and whole pages disappear every single day.

To save this history, the Internet Archive uses a three-step process:

• Exploring the Web: They use friendly automated computer helpers called crawlers (or web spiders). Just like you might wander down every street in your neighborhood, these crawlers click on links to visit billions of public web pages every day.
• Taking Snapshots: When a crawler visits a page, it takes a complete digital snapshot of everything it sees, including the words, pictures, and buttons.
• Filing It Away: The archive saves that snapshot inside thousands of giant computer hard drives called servers. It organizes them on a special timeline called the Wayback Machine.

Besides web pages, regular people and librarians also donate old music, out-of-print books, home movies, and vintage video games. The archive scans these items and stores them safely so that anyone with an internet connection can read, listen to, or play them for free, just like borrowing an old board game from a community center.