We often hear the phrase “the internet is forever,” but recent events have underscored just how fragile our digital world can be. With incidents like the sudden disappearance of MTV News, wiping decades of cultural media, we’re constantly reminded that online content can vanish in an instant.

In this fragile digital landscape, organizations like Prelinger Archives are working to preserve our cultural heritage. Today, Prelinger Archives holds a vast collection of archival film, showcasing culture and industry of the 20th century through amateur and industrial films, home movies, and more.

In 2022, Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) began working with Prelinger Archives to digitize a vast collection of archival film footage and make these materials broadly accessible through the Internet Archive and the decentralized web. From collections of activism and propaganda films across the 1960s and 1970s to films documenting the lead-up to today’s climate crisis and chronicling the history of technology, Prelinger Archives is curating vital historical materials and ensuring their long-term preservation on the Filecoin network.

Read on for a Q&A with Rick and Megan Prelinger, co-directors of Prelinger Archives, as we explore the organization’s contributions to archiving and disseminating cultural works in an age of digital fragility.

What motivated you to work with FFDW to digitize and preserve the Prelinger Archives collection?

Our film archives hold unique and irreplaceable footage containing evidence of everyday life, culture, labor, leisure, and activism across the Americas and around the world in the 20th century. Even under the best conditions, born-analog media materials may not endure much more than a century. We believe that infinitely duplicable digital storage in a decentralized environment is the best strategy for ensuring that the 21st and 22nd centuries, and beyond, can benefit from knowing the history of the 20th century. Unlike most other moving image archives, we collect film with the intention of sharing it. Stepping up our collaboration with FFDW has enabled us to scan and share archival film on a much broader scale than has ever been possible before.

Can you explain the challenges you face with traditional archival methods and how decentralized solutions, like Filecoin and IPFS, address these issues?

Traditional archival methods are rooted in institutional enclosure, typically lacking a noncommercial model for access even for interested people today –– much less a century from now and beyond. Traditional archival methods are also oriented to the preservation of born-analog material. While this is very important, each analog original is unique and ultimately vulnerable to the forces of either time or catastrophe. Digitization of analog originals is essential to the long-term preservation of the evidence contained in those materials and expanding access to them, and decentralized storage is a useful intervention into the problem of any one storage facility being vulnerable to failure. It also offers insurance against single points of failure; immutability of the original digital object; and distributed content and metadata.

What potential do you see for decentralized web technologies to revolutionize the field of archival science more broadly?

In the first quarter of the 21st century, archival materials are subject to cancellation by political actors and vulnerable to being caught in politics of enclosure. In addition, organizations that rely on commercial cloud providers for the storage of records that exist in the public interest are placing the public interest at risk from corporate fallibilities and decision-making processes. In any of these contexts, unique originals –– both analog and digital –– are single points of potential loss of historical memory if they are compromised. Decentralized web technologies have the capability to serve as a global memory repository that is a healthy layer of technology removed from the externalities that affect the viability of both analog materials and existing storage environments.

What role does Prelinger Archives play in educating other archivists and institutions about the benefits of decentralized web technologies?

Our project with FFDW is recognized in the field of moving image archives as a well-regarded example of mass digitization at scale. We have presented about the project at professional symposia such as "Stewarding Indigenous Knowledge Through Ethics, Law, and the Archive" in Mexico City, presented by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA); at “Century of 16” at the University of Illinois, recognizing the centenary of the 16mm film format; and annually at the Association of Moving Image Archives (AMIA) annual conference.

The project has hosted two Pathways internships through the AMIA, and in 2024 the Pathways intern attended DWeb Camp and learned more about decentralized technology to benefit the archival field. We regularly hear questions and comments from archives expressing interest in learning about decentralized storage. In addition, the status of a fully funded workshop afforded by the partnership with FFDW has made possible the development of many partnerships with small, regional, and special interest archival collections, including community and tribal collections, that are now being digitized. As word has spread about these partnerships, interest only grows.

Looking ahead, what are your hopes and plans for the future of Prelinger Archives in the context of the decentralized web?

We are deeply thrilled and gratified to have this opportunity to begin preserving so many essential moving images and the evidence they hold in decentralized web storage. This partnership has created a new standard for the efficiency, scope, and reach of mass digitization projects. Looking ahead, we want to workshop how decentralized storage of these archives can continue to be resilient and accessible after our collaboration winds down. As we commence year three of our collaboration, we are seeing our efforts to build partnerships with community and government agencies gain momentum. We’re finding that a bounty of unique and vulnerable materials are becoming available for digitization and long-term decentralized storage, and we hope to continue preserving and making these materials accessible for the public benefit and use by all.