Remembering the Past, Preserving the Present: The America 250 Semiquincentennial Web Archive

The America 250 Semiquincentennial Web Archive documents how Americans are commemorating and reflecting on the nation’s 250th anniversary. In this interview, Malea Walker discusses how the collection evolved from a project focused on government websites into a broader effort to document the many ways communities across the country are marking this historic milestone.  

Please introduce yourself. What is your job at the Library of Congress, and what was your role in creating this collection? 

My name is Malea Walker, and I am a Reference Librarian in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room. I specialize in government documents, so I initially wanted to start a collection that would archive the websites of all of the America 250 state commissions and the federal government websites that were being created to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. With those sites in mind, I proposed the collection in 2023, but when the scope expanded to include other subjects, I became the Collection Leader for a collaborative web archive collection team that includes subject experts from around the Library. 

Can you briefly describe the collection?  

After I proposed the collection, it quickly became clear that there was interest in gathering more perspectives on the 250th anniversary than just the government websites. Melissa Wertheimer originally co-led the collection with me in her former Music Division position. She helped to get this off the ground, and I couldn’t have done it without her! We gathered a team of librarians from across the Library to find relevant content and add it to the collection. The team has worked since 2023 to find websites from cultural institutions, communities, and other organizations that are finding different ways to celebrate and reflect upon the 250th anniversary of the United States. 

While the Library’s unparalleled historical collections can help to tell the story of what took place 250 years ago, this archive will help to document what is happening now as the country reflects on our history and celebrates our achievements. Two hundred and fifty years ago, many people’s experiences and perspectives were not well represented or preserved in the historical record. This collection will help preserve a wider range of voices and viewpoints for people to consider in the next 250 years.   

How did you select material to archive? Did you have any specific goals or considerations in mind when nominating content? 

We focus on websites that include a substantive amount of information about local events or important historical moments as well as state commission meeting activities. We are trying to get a big picture representation of how our country and communities are celebrating the anniversary and reflecting on the history that has led up to this point. The first item we added to the collection was the official website for America250, and it served as a valuable resource to our team to find state and U.S. territory commission websites as they were newly created. 

What are some of the highlights? 

Each state and territory is celebrating not just the events of the Revolutionary War and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but also the milestones of their own histories. For example, Colorado is celebrating 150 years of statehood, and it’s also the 100th anniversary of the completion of Route 66! It is a wonderful time to learn not just about our country’s history, but about local history as well and how it all connects. The collection includes many websites that represent these local celebrations, such as Philadelphia250, Concord250, and Warren County NY America 250 Semiquincentennial.     

What challenges have you faced in creating this collection?  

People use a variety of names to refer to this anniversary including America 250, the Semiquincentennial, and Freedom 250. In some instances, websites have changed their own terminology, and along with it, their URLs . We have had to keep up with these shifts for websites that we continue to capture. For example, the original web address we included for the Nebraska Semiquincentennial Commission was https://history.nebraska.gov/semiquincentennial-commission/. The URL changed to https://history.nebraska.gov/us250/ within the past year.    

Why do you think web archiving is important for documenting this anniversary? How do you imagine researchers, now or in the future, might use this web archive? 

Major anniversaries are a time for reflection on the past, as well as time for reflection on our country in the present. Understandably, people feel a mixture of emotions and express them in different ways. During the country’s previous milestones like the Bicentennial and Centennial, many of these opinions, observations, and reflections were published in print or discussed in person. Now that people primarily express themselves online, it is a critical time to preserve the stories that are being published on these websites. Researchers in the future will be able to use this archive to compare the Semiquincentennial to records of the Bicentennial or Centennial celebrations.