The September 11 Digital Archive is a digital archive that stores information relating to the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. It contains over 150,000 digital files including images, videos, audio, and over 40,000 first-hand accounts of the attacks. It is part of the collection of the Library of Congress.
The September 11 Digital Archive launched in January 2002,[1] which is a few months after the September 11 attacks of 2001. It is made at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media in partnership with the American Social History Project of the City University of New York.[2] [3] [4] The project started with a $700,000 grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation[5] and aims to "create a permanent record of the events of September 11, 2001".[6] In October 2003 the September 11 Digital Archive collection was acquired by the Library of Congress.[7]
From 2003 to 2011 the project did not have "adequate funding", which caused the project to have concerns about lack of sustainability, the need to redesign the website, update metadata, etc. They also had worries about not being able to defend against a potential anniversary cyberattack. In 2010 it was reported that the website design had not been changed since 2004, and that although the project would still accept new submissions, they would not appear on the website.[8] A lot of these problems were solved after a Save America's Treasures grant.
The archive inspired the Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive, a digital archive for New Zealand's Canterbury earthquakes of 2010–2011.[9]
The types of information stored in the archive includes photos, emails, videos, animations and cartoons, stories from survivors and witnesses, audio, videos, documents, instant messages, slideshow presentations, and web blogs. Images include photos of the World Trade Center and the New York skyline before the attacks. It also has post cards, flyers, etc. from New York streets.
The archive contains documents taken from the New York City Fire Department, National Guard, the Smithsonian Institute, Red Cross and others organizations. It also contains interviews of people with ancestry from the middle-east who were affected backlash and harassment following the attacks. They also went through Arabic websites and worked with the Museum of Chinese in America to record and translate interviews of Chinatown residents.
The archive originally aimed for 1,000 'stories'. By September 2002, it had 90,000, and had a total storage of 50 gigabytes in September 2003. As at 2021 there are over 150,000 digital files in the collection, including 40,000 first-hand accounts and 15,000 images.
The archive encourages many people to contribute. They do not have to be survivors or witnesses, and did not have to be at the scene in New York or the Pentagon or Pennsylvania at the time. Foreigners are also encouraged to contribute;[10] a Spanish version of the website archive was created to encourage contributions from Spanish-speakers.
Because anyone can contribute to the archive, it contains incorrect or misleading information. Ekaterina Haskins argues that this can be useful to historians, because the archive "could reveal certain personal and emotional aspects of the event that would otherwise be lost in a strict authentication and appraisal process." However, it can make it difficult for historians looking through the archive to determine what is real and what is not.