The web has no memory - unless it is created

New screenshot archive of online news sites from around the world captured on September 11, 2001 www.interactivepublishing.net/september

The web has no memory - unless it is created

New screenshot archive of online news sites from September 11, 2001 www.interactivepublishing.net/september

Zurich, 2nd September 2002 - "September 11" is a screen shot collection of 230 news sites from around the world captured on September 11/12, 2001. This Digital Collection, from Interactive Publishing GmbH of Zurich/Switzerland, has been visited by over 400,000 people who looked at more than 4 million pages in the last 11 months.

As few online publications kept copies of their pages, many of these screenshots are the only witness to what the front page of an online news site looked liked on September 11/12, 2001. The collection illustrates both the differing reactions of news sites from different countries and, more broadly, the state of the online news publishing industry on a global scale in the fall of 2001.

The collection is searchable by country, time of screen capture or publication.

Hundreds of publications, weblogs, university and educational sites have linked to "September 11". The collection has been included in course material for schools and studies of journalism. It is a unique moment in web time captured for history.

Norbert Specker of Interactive Publishing states, "The first screen captures happened almost automatically out of the knowledge that if I did not do it, the pages would be lost forever. Over the course of the following days, we found that a lot of people followed a similar impulse and the original 130 captures were complemented by 100 contributions from around the web. We put together the database and have been online with the exhibition since 17 September, 2001."

The September 11 exhibition is a non-profit venture. It has been featured in The Guardian, Spiegel, Stern, La Repubblica, Wired, USAToday, ABC, El Mundo, Tijd, Helsingborg Dagblad and many other publications.

About The Digital Collection

The Digital Collection creates dynamic exhibitions of web pages. The goal is to capture internet moments along various topic lines and make them easily searchable and accessible.

About the Digital Collection Tool

The Digital Collection Tool has been developed in the course of the last 2 years and is used for various commercial and non-commercial documentations. It allows for the capture, indexing, annotation and display of screen shots. An example is the exhibition "World Cup 2002" of this summer (www.interactivepublishing.net/worldcup )

The tool is made available on an application service providing (ASP) base.
www.interactivepublishing.net/september/tool.php

About Interactive Publishing

Since 1994 Interactive Publishing GmbH has been organizing the yearly industry conference Interactive Publishing Europe in Zurich. The premier industry event brings together online publishing executives from 30 countries. The next conference on January 16/17, 2003 will be its 9th edition and will be the central event of Content Summit 03.

www.interactivepublishing.net

For more information please contact:

Norbert Specker or Bettina Tamo

mailto:info@interactivepublishing.net

+41 1 256 70 88

Interactive Publishing GmbH
Samariterstrasse 5
8032 Zürich/Switzerland