Shopping, beer and bus shelters -- the websites that sum up Britain
In April of this year the British Library along with libraries in Scotland, Wales and Dublin gained powers to archive the whole of the UK Web for future generations of researchers. To mark the introduction of these regulations the library today announced a list of 100 sites it says will be essential reading for future generations.
Lucy Burgess, Head of Content Strategy for the British Library says that the project aims to collect about a petabyte of data over the next decade. "We want to paint a diverse picture of what life in the UK today is like, for our great grandchildren and for future generations of researchers so they can understand how we lived, how we worked and how we felt. We’re talking about our culture and our digital heritage here and that’s what we exist to preserve".
Compiled by a panel of curators and experts, the list includes sites you might expect such as eBay, Twitter, Facebook, the national Health Service and the BBC along with the Meteorological Office (who said we Brits are obsessed by the weather?) and the Visit Britain tourism pages.
The inclusion of the Beer in the Evening site reinforces another national stereotype and the fact that retailers Amazon and Argos are on the list underlines that there's still some truth in Napoleon Bonaparte’s line about a nation of shopkeepers -- or at least of shoppers.
Our strange obsessions get aired too with the appearance of the Unst Bus Shelter site charting the history of a bus shelter on a remote Scottish island. Drab day-to-day details of the capital are captured on the crowd-sourced Sh*t London site, which encourages people to share random oddments of city life. There are also sites capturing street art and murals plus community blogs giving an insight into everyday British life.
To prove that we’re not so obsessed with the Web that we've forgotten how to laugh at ourselves the list includes the Beano comic, the British Cartoon Archive and McGonagall Online, a site dedicated to the man widely touted as the worst poet in the English language.
The library is keen to stimulate debate and find out what other UK sites people would like to see included. You can join in on the 100 Websites page or by using the #digitaluniverse tag on Twitter.
Photo Credit: Anne Burgess