Museums keep real world images safe for posterity. But what about digital images? Filecoin Foundation is now evolving to preserve cultural artifacts in digital form using decentralized network technology.

The Filecoin Foundation (FF) today announced the addition of new cultural datasets to the Filecoin network from notable organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Flickr Foundation, the Internet Archive, and MIT Open Learning.

With over 500,000 culturally significant digital artifacts now guarded on the network, Filecoin is redefining data preservation in an age where the integrity, provenance, and stability of information are more critical than ever, Filecoin said.

Modern innovation thrives on data; it is an important building block for the development of industries, including artificial intelligence (AI). However, as reliance on data grows, so do the risks of depending on centralized storage systems. Natural disasters, human errorand outages would jeopardize access to critical information, which could threaten the preservation of culture and history, the company said.

Decentralized networks like Filecoin are changing how data is stored, verified, and shared. Filecoin uses cryptographic proofs to ensure data integrity, verifying that files remain unchanged and unaltered over time. Filecoin distributes data across a decentralized global network, ensuring that information remains accessible even if parts of the network go offline.

The new data uploaded to Filecoin covers a wide range of cultural and educational resources, from some of the earliest audio recordings in history to a vast archive of photographs that capture the essence of human history. By using decentralized storage infrastructure, these organizations are pioneering a new era of digital preservation, ensuring that valuable resources are protected for future generations. Datasets new to the network include:

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is working to upload nearly 300 digitized sound recordings from Alexander Graham Bell to IPFS and Filecoin. Famous for patenting the first practical telephone in 1876, Bell also pioneered recorded sound.

Experimental recordings from his Volta Laboratory in Washington, DC, from 1881 to 1889, are some of the earliest recordings ever made. The remaining collection of about 300 records was considered unplayable until new technologies of the 21st century made it possible to hear them.

The Flickr Foundation is contributing the 1,000 most-viewed photos from Flickr Commons, a 17-year-old program focused on making photo collections from our cultural institutions more accessible. in public. Launched in 2008 with the Library of Congress, Flickr Commons now includes over two million images from 120 cultural institutions around the world. The Flickr Commons 1k Collection includes photos from the US National Archives, NASA, the Library of Congress, and the George Eastman Museum.

The Internet Archive will upload the 2024 End of Term Web Archive to the Filecoin network along with previous End of Term crawl data. Since 2008, the End of Term Web Archive project has acquired and archived US government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The project captured websites at three distinct points during the transition: before the election, after the election, and after the inauguration. Internet Archive Canada will support archiving in the Canadian federal government transition in 2025.

MIT Open Learning and OpenCourseWare (OCW) upload selected content to the Filecoin network, including foundational courses such as A Variable Calculus and Introduction to Algorithmsand climate and sustainability topics such as Urban Energy Systems and Policies and D-Lab Energyto support institutional needs for robust tamper-proof archiving and alternative distribution channels.

Starling Lab recently launched a 22-petabyte Filecoin storage node at the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries. Initial collections housed include portions of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, including testimony from survivors of the atrocity; several photojournalism projects; and 3D/VR scans of historical sites. The Starling Lab is an academic research center based at Stanford and USC that specializes in ensuring the integrity of historical, legal, and journalism archives.

These organizations work together Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), the Filecoin Foundation’s sister non-profit working to advance the decentralized web through education, research, and development.

“Our mission is to preserve people’s most important information,” said Marta Belcher, president and chair of the Filecoin Foundation and FFDW, in a statement. “We are pleased to partner with these institutions to ensure that important cultural data is permanently preserved using robust decentralized storage systems.”

The Filecoin Foundation remains committed to its mission of preserving humanity’s most important information. These new data highlight the transformative potential of decentralized technologies to preserve and access critical information, responding to the growing importance of data integrity, provenance, and longevity in the digital age. today.