The Internet Archive: An Interview with Brewster Kahle

Abstract

In this interview, founder and director of the Internet Archive Brewster Kahle talks about the cornerstone of modern librarianship: mass digitization. A leading figure in the open access movement, Kahle discusses the creation of the Internet Archive and the challenges facing education today. He reflects on the labour of scanning, the creation of digital content, and explains the economy of digitization that underpins the Internet Archive. He considers deaccessioning and the need to start storing not just digital data but physical books. In the context of his 1996 manifesto ‘Archiving the Internet’ (included here as an appendix), he explores his own trajectory as a digital librarian as he explains the motto of the Internet Archive: ‘universal access to all knowledge’.