All UK web content to be stored by libraries

From online dispatches

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All output shared online in the UK, including tweets and Facebook status updates, will be collected and preserved by British libraries, the BBC has reported.

The British Library and four other "legal deposit libraries,” including the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, the University Library, Cambridge and the Library of Trinity College are listed to archive web content.

Around 4.8 million websites, magazines, books, academic journals and countless posts will be archived as around a billion pages a year will be made available for research, according to estimations.

The project aims to preserve online information that disappears within a certain period of time after publication.

People may presume that information on the web lasts forever, but huge amounts of research material have already disappeared, Ben Sanderson from the British Library said.