I Had a Website: The Practices of Archive Team and the Internet Archive in Archiving GeoCities

Presenting Materials

Both teams keep the materials of GeoCities websites in WARC files, the standardized file format that contains a log of requests and server responses for archiving web materials. Archive Team released the WARC files as a 1TB torrent. They specify in the README.txt that this torrent is not for a “data tourist” and redirect casual viewers to other GeoCities archives (“README.TXT”). The Internet Archive offers Archive Team's WARC files to download as well, but also renders its own WARC files on the Wayback Machine, which offers a web view closer to the original experience of the GeoCities websites.

Screenshot of File With Lines of Text — Fig. 3. Author's screenshot of a sample WARC file from the Internet Archive.

Screenshot of Wayback Machine's Capture of GeoCities Site /Paris/7172 — Fig. 4. Author's screenshot of Wayback Machine rendering of GeoCities website.