Daniels Faculty lecturer Ultan Byrne recently published a review of The Internet Archive in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH).

The Internet Archive, writes Byrne, is “an openly accessible electronic repository of public domain and free-license cultural materials launched in 1996 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brewster Kahle.”

Why does it matter that an archive has a shape, or that its shape be apprehensible? Without understanding the methodology by which a collection was assembled, whether by the expert knowledge of the professional archivist, the unsystematic contributions of individual users, or the automatic operation of autonomous web crawlers, we might never be sure of the biases embedded in its boundary shape.
 

A graduate of the University of Toronto's Master of Architecture program, Byrne also holds a degree in philosophy and is a computer programmer.

Visit the JSAH website to read the full review.