The following interview with African

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This collaboration with Google underscores the importance of web archiving and expands the reach of the Wayback Machine, making it even easier for users to access and explore archived content. However, the link to archived webpages will not be available in instances where the rights holder has opted out of having their site archived or if the webpage violates content policies.

folklore scholars Laura Gibbs and Helen Nde is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age.


Selections from Laura Gibbs’ “A Reader’s Guide to whatsapp number database Folktales at the Internet Archive“
Crafting and sharing folktales by word or performance is a long-standing tradition on the African continent. No one owned the stories. They were community treasures passed down through the generations.

Over time, many disappeared. The few stories that were written down enjoyed a broader audience once published. As those books were harder to find or out of print, digitized versions kept some folktales alive.

Laura Gibbs and Helen Nde are among researchers of African folktales who rely on digital collections to do their work. They maintain that digital preservation is essential for these rare cultural artifacts to remain accessible to the public.

Much of the transmission of African stories through performance has been lost. “That’s a culture that has either completely vanished or is vanishing,” said Nde, who immigrated from Cameroon to the United States.