Exhibition Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress
Mechanics of Memory
In the 1930s, mathematician Claude Shannon pioneered the idea that all information could be represented by a simple yes or no question. He imagined a series of binary codes, or “bits.” Today, those bits are another way to capture sound, images, words, and data. We can store our memories locally and transmit them globally.
Library of Congress staff preserve our physical collections as well as data more fragile than we often imagine it to be. The collections are maintained for future researchers who will need to access data created on systems that became obsolete.
