Aruba’s colonial history also meant that documents were scattered everywhere. “Our collection was scattered,” says Edric Croes, head of archive conservation and management at the National Archives of Aruba. Works had to be scanned all over the world, including in the Netherlands, Spain, the United States and other islands such as Curaçao. Setting up a hub to find the documents online has been especially helpful for researchers abroad, who no longer have to travel to Aruba to physically dig through archives, according to Scholing.
It is unusual for a country to outsource these types of projects to a foreign non-profit organization. “In a dream world, every national library would have enough money to put together a great team of people,” says University of Waterloo history professor Ian Milligan, who is writing a book on the origins of the Internet Archive and was not involved at the founding of Aruba. project. “Governments often don’t have that.”
The Internet Archive has not previously acted as a custodian of a country’s entire collection, although it has worked with a number of national and regional libraries around the world. In 2011, it partnered with the Cultural Bureau of Bali, an island province of Indonesia, to preserve what the agency described at the time as “90 percent of Balinese literature.” (This now forms the Internet Archive Balinese digital library collection.)
Aruba’s archivists hope that other countries will follow in his digital footsteps. “It is a very feasible model that can be applied to many small islands, developing countries and even larger countries with limited resources,” says Scholing.
Collaborating with the Internet Archive seems an obvious solution for archivists who are strapped for cash. However, potential partners should consider what it means to rely on another country’s private organization, an organization with its own challenges.
“When we think about digital sustainability, we often think about the technical challenges,” says Waterloo’s Milligan. “But I think the biggest challenges are the social challenges, the human challenges. How can you set up an organization that will still be around in fifty years?”
He calls the Internet Archive a very ‘sustainable structure’ in terms of future-proofing. But that doesn’t make it completely invulnerable. The Archives is currently facing a number of serious legal challenges, including: a lawsuit from major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Capitol and Sony, which poses an existential threat; the labels are seeking damages that could amount to more than $400 million.
That comes on top of an ongoing dispute with publishers over a digital lending library they set up during the pandemic. While its digitization capabilities are far more robust than those of many other nation states, the Internet Archive’s position in an increasingly violent battleground between copyright holders and technology companies means that its future is also precarious.
The Internet Archive considers Aruba’s approval to be particularly topical. “It’s really empowering to see the nation of Aruba continue to add material and upload content as we face this,” Freeland said. “We are here for the long term.”