May 18, International Museum Day, was celebrated all over the country with free admission, guided tours, entertainment and exhibitions related to memory and heritage.
Arquivo.pt contributed with an exhibition of old web pages, entitled “Digital Memory through the Internet of the Past”, which was on display at one of the stands at the National Coach Museum in Lisbon.
The pages were selected to show different aspects of the Alentejo over time. From 2016, pages relating to the Heritales project were selected.
Heritales and Crowd-Recycling drew attention to the preservation of the Internet’s memory
Heritales is a project based in Évora that aims to study and disseminate heritage in all its manifestations. It is known for its main event created in 2016, HERITALES – International Heritage Film Festival.
Crowd-Recycling is a project focused on good practices for sustainability.
Heritales, Crowd-Recycling and Arquivo.pt carried out this action in collaboration with the aim of giving visibility to content published on the web over time. Preserving and giving access to digital content is fundamental to enhancing heritage.
Why an exhibition of old websites is a good idea
Making an exhibition of websites over time is relatively easy, all you have to do is come up with a theme, which can also be the history of an institution, and choose pages preserved on Arquivo.pt.
An exhibition of old websites is an original idea for the target audience. It often features texts and images that only existed on the web.
By drawing attention to the websites, we realize that many things were left unrecorded and this changes our view of the content we publish today. We start taking more care to save important pages, for example by taking action or saving them on the spot with SavePageNow.
World Internet Day was on May 17th
The day before International Museum Day was World Internet Day (May 17). The proximity of the two commemorations ties in with the theme of preserving memory.
Portugal connected to the Internet for the first time in 1991, with the FCCN project “RCCN IP Service”.
To remember how it all happened, here are the three suggestions that FCCN published on social media for this day: