Go Way Back with Internet Archives

Have you ever wondered if historical information is lost in a constantly changing online environment?  The Internet Archives Wayback Machine provides a way to preserve the online past by taking snapshots of the Web.  According to the information on their site, with the Wayback Machine one can browse over 240 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.   Using Wayback Machine is very straightforward: go to http://archive.org/web/web.php, type the URL of your website in The Wayback Machine search field and click on the button “Take Me Back”.  After that select a year and day from the calendar on which a snapshot was taken (snapshot dates are marked with blue circles).
Take a look at the October 14, 2006 version of the Clark College Libraries website  http://web.archive.org/web/20061014020113/http://www.clark.edu/Library/

Recently I discovered a practical use of the Wayback Machine when I needed to use the US. Census Bureau website (http://www.census.gov/), which is currently not accessible due to the lapse in government funding.  Using the Internet Archives Wayback Machine I was able to search a September 2013 version  of this site.  One can often encounter glitches while trying to open an archived version of this particular website with the Wayback Machine but trying patiently different snapshot dates  until one works can be rewarding.  And if you are not comfortable with the “trial and error” approach, you can always use the Statistical Abstracts of the United States books (REF HA 202 .A1) in the Cannell Library Reference Section.