At a time when free speech is under attack and the public record is fragile, supporters gathered in San Francisco on October 21 to celebrate the Internet Archive’s work to preserve knowledge for all through Democracy’s Library, an initiative to make government information accessible to everyone.Watch Recording | View Event PhotosNancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, were among those offering congratulations and encouragement to the Archive at the celebration of “Democracy’s Library: Tools for Participation.”“Preserving the data is essential to a democracy,” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi declared from the stage at the Funston Avenue headquarters. “Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything. Without it, practically nothing.’ But for public sentiment to prevail, you have to know—and we have to show them where they can find out.”Pelosi reminisced about time spent with her five children at public libraries, and her service as a library commissioner. Much has changed over the years in preserving and communicating information, she said, but libraries must continue for a free society to thrive.Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi“To me, libraries are about freedom. Libraries are about liberty,” Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said, urging the audience to seek out candidates for Congress who share the public’s love and support of libraries.Making the Public Record AccessibleInternet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle told the audience that democracies need an educated populace and public access to government information. “Just because something’s in the public domain, doesn’t mean that it’s publicly accessible,” he said. “If it’s accessible today, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be accessible tomorrow.”That’s why the Internet Archive is committed to leveraging digital tools to preserve government documents and make them easy for the public to access, Kahle said. Last year, the Archive joined more than 1,000 libraries in the United States as a designated Federal Depository Library to make government information permanently available. Since 2004, it has been collecting born-digital government publications; now it is digitizing the print and microfiche past.“We want this material to really come to life. That’s our shared heritage that has been authored at taxpayer expense,” Kahle said. “We want to celebrate openness. Openness brings us together. Openness, communities, and democracies all are needed to build a world that we want to be in.”In video remarks played at the Oct. 21 event, Reich said attacks on free speech and efforts to control access to information threaten the foundation of our democracy.“Understanding our history, analyzing government data, holding the powerful accountable – it all centers on being able to access information freely, and it all now lives digitally,” Reich said. “Authoritarian laws to restrict this access makes the Internet Archives work more critical than ever. Restricting our access to digital information makes us less informed, less inspired, and easier to control.”Reich expressed appreciation for the leadership of the Internet Archive in safeguarding the historical record.“Thank you to the Internet Archive for your tireless work protecting and preserving our access to information in today’s digital world,” Reich said. “Your work is crucial against authoritarianism and sorely needed to protect our democracy.”Celebrating Community HeroesThe program highlighted how individuals can make use of preserved local government documents to make a difference in their communities.Eric Hryniewicz was recognized as a “hometown hero” for discovering land being eyed for development in Falmouth, Massachusetts, near the town’s water supply was actually protected.With the help of records scanned at the New England Regional Digitization Center at the Boston Public Library, Hryniewicz showed the town had purchased the forested land under consideration in the early 1930s for conservation. Joining with other citizens, Hryniewicz made the case to the town government to halt the development.Speaking at the event, he urged the public to make use of archives and libraries in their collective action efforts.“I was not an expert in deeds. I’m not a lawyer. I was just a person that cared about a place,” Hryniewicz said. “I went looking for an answer and went to the library. I doubted the narrative sold to us and a librarian pointed us to the Internet Archive. What we found there was a story of care and compassion for us. Our predecessors had put together considerable resources … to guarantee a future where you have open space and clean water in the town, and that history had been lost.”The 2026 Internet Archive Hero Award was presented to the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) for providing tools and training to preserve local news online. The annual award recognizes individuals and organizations that have demonstrated leadership in making information available to people around the world. Learn more about this year’s recipients.“Over the past two decades, the United States has lost nearly 40 percent of its local newspapers,” explained Anna Trammel, program manager of archiving & data services at Internet Archive. “When that happens to a community, something really irreplaceable is lost … coverage of the school board meeting, budget cuts, or the local election. The information that’s not available anywhere else and that matters most to the people who live in that community.”Through the Today’s News for Tomorrow (TNT) program, Poynter and IRE are connecting journalists in 300 newsrooms with free access to the Internet Archive’s web archiving and preservation services to save their work.“Strong journalism is at the core of a healthy democracy. We have not spent a lot of time, however, thinking about what happens to the first draft of news after we witness and report it,” said Kristen Hare, Poynter’s director of craft and local news. “We’re really honored on behalf of the Pointer Institute to accept this award…We’re concerned not just with preserving the work of individual journalists but making sure that a community’s memory stays preserved for future generations.”Jonathan Kealing, executive director of IRE, said the impact of investigative accountability reporting isn’t always recognized at the time the story is published. “That work can take a long time to find its ultimate end,” he said. “In an era when we’re seeing newsrooms close and shut down, we risk that work never reaching its fullest potential if we don’t preserve it for perpetuity on the Internet Archive.” Kealing expressed gratitude for partnering with the Archive and Poynter to ensure that the work of journalists is preserved for communities and people to access long into the future.Participation for AllThe evening wrapped with a tribute to the music in the public domain that artists can use as a tool for participation to remix and reimagine.The Internet Archive recently partnered with WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, on their Public Song Project, an annual contest where people are invited to contribute recordings of songs created based on works in the public domain.WNYC’s Simon Close with Public Song Project winners Gabrielle and Dexter-Marie.Simon Close, a producer for WNYC and steward of the Public Song Project, announced that submissions were received from all over the world and songs by the finalists have been preserved in a collection on the Internet Archive. Two of the winners, Gabrielle and Dexter-Marie, were recognized on stage. A portion of their song, “Now You Know,” based on a sample of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” recorded by Marian Anderson, was played for the audience.Close led the audience in playing kazoos to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” with lyrics he adapted from the Internet Archive’s About page as “The Battle Hymn of the Internet Archive” singing….“We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Today we have 30 years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine. One trillion web pages, 56 million books and, 13 million audio recordings, 15 million videos, 5.3 million images, 1.3 million software programs, in our first 30 years!”The post From Main Street to Capitol Hill, the Case for Democracy’s Library first appeared on Internet Archive Blogs.