Those who cannot remember history are doomed (or is that damned?) to repeat it.

The Internet is, by its very nature, dynamic, in flux, changing every day, every hour, every minute, every second.

Data is added, data is changed, and some data is removed. These days we’re seeing some troubling removals, such as USDA annual welfare information and a US government website for disabled children.

Fortunately those two sites were mirrored; the Internet Archive has a copy of the site for disabled children, while the Memory Hole 2 has stashed part of the USDA information and a complete archive is now at the Internet Archive.

But this data doesn’t get mirrored by magic. It needs vigilant folks watching out for information that could be deleted, and mirroring it before that happens.

And it’s not just the United States.

In Greece there are three web sites of a media publisher that might be closed down due to lack of funds. Guess what, those sites are used by the Greek language Wikipedia and related projects; articles published on those sites are cited as sources. What happens if they disappear?

The answer is to mirror them before they do. It so happens that I have a little script… Bare bones, to be sure, but you get the idea. Grab urls, shovel them in, wander off for a few hours, and feel better about the world. Or at least about one small corner of it.