Happy Ninth Day of Christmas. Today’s I’m supporting The Internet Archive, a remarkably important public service for the 21st century.

The Internet Archive aims to be a library for the web. They’re most known for The Wayback Machine, a collection of web page snapshots over time. Plug in a URL, and see what, say, cnn.com looked like on a given day. That’s tremendously valuable on its own (and has saved my butt more than once), but they do so much more than that. They’re currently archiving terabytes of public climate science data they’re worried might become unavailable when we get a new administration who’s antagonistic to science. And when notable public figures try to rewrite their own history by scrubbing the web of inconvenient facts, The Internet Archive is our best defense. They’re also an astounding cultural resource, preserving over 154 thousand software titles, 10 million texts and ebooks, 3 million videos (not counting their new television archive), and much more. Regardless of whether you care about the social, political, anthropological, or cultural aspects, if you think what we do in the digital world matters, The Internet Archive should be important to you.

The Internet Archive has worked with the Smithsonian Institute, the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology Library, and many others. They’re serious about what they do, and they do amazing work. They’re currently undertaking a fundraising drive intended to make a copy of the entire archive in Canada, which is a massive undertaking. They’re trying to raise $5 million to get this done, and are just about half-way there. Consider helping them out, or just join them and get familiar with what they have to offer.