Archives Timeline Outline

Survey of Ancient Libraries and Archives in the Near East
(1,500 BCE – 300 BCE)

How Herodotus Used Writing and Messages in his Histories
(Circa 450 BCE – 420 BCE)

The Archives of the Athenian Cavalry
(Circa 350 BCE – 250 BCE)

The Archive or Library in the Temple of Edfu
(237 BCE – 57 BCE)

Origins of the Lateran Library
(Circa 350 CE – 650)

Foundation of the Tresor des Chartes
(July 3, 1194)

The Vatican Archives Follow the Movements of the Pope
(1245 – 1783)

The First Separate Publication on Archives
(1632)

The First Anthology on Libraries and Library Science
(1666)

First Published Rules for Archival Operation?
(1678)

Foundation of Palaeography and Diplomatics
(1681)

The Word Palaeography Coined
(1708)

The First English History of Paleography and Diplomatics
(1784)

Foundation of the Archives nationales de France
(1790)

The First Historical Society in the United States
(January 24, 1791)

Foundation of the Ecole nationale des chartes
(February 22, 1821)

Foundation of the Public Record Office
(1838)

Standardization of Archival Practice
(1898)

Jenkinson Publishes A Manual of Archive Administration
(1922)

Foundation of the U.S. National Achives
(June 19, 1934)

Founding of the Society of American Archivists
(December 1936)

The Bettmann Archive; the Beginning of the Visual Age
(1938)

Fantasies of an All-Encompassing Archive or "Universal Library"
(1939)

Borges' Universe as a Library, or Universal Library or Archive
(1941)

The Society of Archivists (England) is Founded
(1947)

Archival Records Include "Machine-Readable Materials"
(1950)

The Largest Archive of Digital Social Science Data
(1962)

The Management of Archives
(1965)

Acquiring New Archival Material at the Rate of 1 Mile per Year
(Circa 1970)

Foundation of Apple Computer and the Origin of the Name
(April 1, 1976 – December 13, 2011)

The First Formally Recognized Archival Description Standards in the U.S.
(1982)

The Digital Domesday Project--Doomed to Early Digital Obsolescence
(1984 – 1986)

Slow Fires
(1987)

The Memory of the World Program
(1992)

NSF Digital Libraries Initiative
(1994)

Task Force on Digital Archiving
(December 1994)

Online Searchable Archive of Over 1000 Academic Journals
(1995)

Brewster Kahle Founds the Internet Archive
(1996)

Origins of Australia's Web Archive
(1998)

NARA Begins ERA for Preservation of Digital Archives
(1998)

On the Preservation of Knowledge in the Electronic Age
(1998)

Storing Public Records Electronically
(1999)

NewspaperARCHIVE.com
(1999)

MINERVA to Preserve Open-Access Web Resources
(2000)

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
(December 21, 2000)

The Digital Preservation Coalition
(January 2001)

Open Archival Information System
(January 2001)

Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities
(May 2002)

Privacy of Medical Records and Electronic Data
(April 14, 2003)

Netpreserve.org
(July 2003)

40,000,000,000 Web Pages Archived
(2005)

The First Intelligible Word from an Extinct South American Civilization?
(August 12, 2005)

Electronic Records Archives System
(September 8, 2005)

Preservation of Digital Objects
(September 15 – September 16, 2005)

The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections
(December 2005)

The Wayback Machine
(2006)

Data Curation as a Profession
(2006)

A Research Library Based on Historical Collections of the Internet Archive
(February 2006)

Access to Nearly One Million Archive Collection Descriptions
(March 2006)

OCLC Merges with RLG
(July 1, 2006)

The Royal Society Digital Journal Archive
(October 29, 2006)

It Would Take 1800 Years to Convert the Paper Records . . . .
(March 10, 2007)

DROID, an Archives Analysis and Identification Tool
(September 27, 2007)

Europeana, the European Digital Library, Museum and Archive
(November 20, 2008)

The BBC Intends to Place 200,000 Oil Paintings on the Internet
(January 28, 2009)

The Largest Municipal Archive in Germany Collapses During Underground Construction
(March 3, 2009)

The World Digital Library Launches
(April 21, 2009)

The WARC Format as an International File Preservation Standard
(June 1, 2009)

Costs of Managed Archiving versus Passive Archiving of Data
(June 4, 2009)

Biological Journals to Require Data-Archiving
(January 2010)

The Library of Congress to Preserve All "Tweets"
(April 14, 2010)

Universal Music Group Donates a "Mile of Music" to the Library of Congress
(January 10, 2011)

"Physical Archiving is Still an Important Function in the Digital Era."The Internet Archive Builds an Archive of Physical Books
(June 6, 2011)

"Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories"
(January 2013)

The Library of Congress Has Archived 170 Billion Tweets
(January 4, 2013)