woodenrocketpress

Every twitpic, ever, to be archived at my apartment.

Mere moments after the Library of Congress announced on its own Twitter feed (@librarycongress) the acquisition, for digital archiving, of every tweet since 2006, steps were put into place by Toronto publisher Dave Proctor to archive the entirety of Twitter’s photography uploading sites Twitpic, Yfrog, Twitgoo and Twitxpic in hardcopy format in cardboard boxes.

“It’s just, you know, it’s just something that I felt I needed to do,” Proctor said.

The photo-sharing sites, which allow storage space for image and video files and provide “Tweeters” with a short URL to allow brief sharing in Twitter’s 140 character posts, host upwards of 1bn images combined, which Proctor has begun purchasing bankers boxes from Business Depot to store.

“I figure if I push the bed up against the wall, you know, I can ram a few more boxes in there. I won’t really sleep because if someone wants to check the library in the middle of the night I’ll have to be there.”

While the Library of Congress has stated that their focus will be on the scholarly and research applications of the acquisition, they have not yet stated the methods by which it will be accessible. Proctor’s image archive, currently printing on his shitty Canon BubbleJet, will be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, “if people just want to come up the back deck on knock on [his] door.”

Proctor, no stranger to the capacities of the internet, has started the popular Facebook fanpage “Can this Tomato Get More Fans than this Other Tomato,” and has stated that he is “really excited,” about this new endeavor. “Especially the Twitxpic ones,” he added.