Long term, post-collapse, and civilisational libraries

gleaned from the Manual for Civilization project from the Long Now in particular the reading lists (and ideas) from Long Now members and the archive.org collection.

Projects that are attempts in this direction:

  • The Rosetta Project: A multi-millennial micro-etched disk with a record of thousands of the worlds languages.
  • Westinghouse Time Capsules: Two time capsules (they actually coined the term for this project) by Westinghouse buried at Worlds Fair sites, one in 01939 and the other 01965 to be recovered in 5000 years. They also did the very smart thing of making a “Book of Record” and an above ground duplicate of the contents on display.
  • The Human Document Project: A German project to create a record of humanity that will last one million years.
  • Crypt of Civilization: A airtight chamber located at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. The crypt consists of preserved artifacts scheduled to be opened in the year 8113 AD.
  • The Voyager Record: The Voyager Golden Record are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, who may find them.
  • Georgia Guidestones: The four granite Guidestones are covered in inscriptions written in 8 major languages that describe the tenets of their imagined Age of Reason.
  • Doomsday Chests by Noah Raford
  • The Forever Book an idea by Kevin Kelly
  • History of Humanity” project
  • Arnano sapphire and glass data storage

Content that has been discussed to be used for these projects:

  • The Gingery books always seemed to me to be a great first pass on how to re-start manufacturing technology
  • Immaculate Telegraphy: An Artist creates hi tech out of materials in nature.
  • Wiki How has a lot of great info and it is continuously updated. The entry on how to deliver a baby seems like a particularly handy one…
  • The Foxfire Books on homespun technology seem to have a slightly less industrial take than the Gingery books, and are pretty comprehensive
  • The Lets Say Youve Gone Back in Time poster to help you restart civilization by Ryan North the creator of the awesome Dinosaur Comics
  • The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. This is a fantastic book, but it might leave people thinking that all technology is powered by woolly mammoths and angels.
  • The Harvard Classic‘s originally known as Dr. Elliots Five Foot Shelf are often referred to as an item that should go into a record like this.
  • Encyclopedia Britannica People often suggest using the latest version that is now out of copyright. I believe this is the 13th edition but so far I have only found digital copies of the 11th.
  • The Domesday book: The Domesday Book is the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086. It would be interesting to find surveys and census’ from around the world
  • The Mormon Genealogical Data: This is also held in a bunker outside Salt Lake City Utah, but it might be nice to have a record of gene lines for a future civilization to better understand its past.
  • The Top 100 Project Gutenberg books: If you are concerned with archiving works in copyright this is a great source to find texts that are free to use.
  • The Internet Archive: An archive of complete snapshots of the web as well as thousands of books and videos. Incidentally you would also get all of our scanned page content from the Rosetta Project with this.
  • Wikipedia: The text only version of this is actually not that large, and could be archived fairly easily. Also one of the few sources that is beginning to get filled out in many languages and is also not held under a copyright.
  • The Panlex Project of cross linked language dictionaries
  • durational_library.txt
  • Last modified: 2022-05-20 09:40
  • by nik