Here, I'll discuss how I got involved with digital preservation.
Like many others who grew up when I did, I had some pretty important formative experiences on the home computer. Some of my earliest memories are of playing Zoombinis and Jumpstart games off of CD-ROMS after getting home from pre-school.
When I got a bit older, though, I started using the internet. I started playing games that were hosted on websites like PBS Kids or Barbie. Then, I started exploring the web a bit further, using search engines to find new websites to play on or find the answers to questions I had.
Time passed, and eventually I got old enough to start seeking out nostalgia. I remembered those old games I used to play online and went looking for them, only to find out... they were gone.
I gave up then, but about a year later I picked up the search again. Surely these pages couldn't have just ceased to exist. There had to be a way to find them somewhere!
Sure enough, there was! Most of what I was looking for had been saved using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. But not everything. Some important pieces of my childhood have been lost to time, and odds are that they can't be recovered.
Luckily, there's ways to prevent this, and there's tons of people already helping out! There's more at stake here than my favorite Flash games, after all.
And then what?
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