Library of Congress To Archive Drunk Tweets

The Library of Congress has partnered with Twitter to start archiving your drunken tweets as well as all others, starting from the first tweet in 2006. The Library of Congress announced the partnership on their blog yesterday. There are currently several billion tweets which account for about five terabytes of data. This will be on top of the current 167 terabytes that the Library of Congress has in digital assets. The Library of Congress noted that the data would not be made available for commercial use. After a six month delay, the data will be accessible "for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library, and preservation." One big sticking point concerned the use of URL shortners. We have seen numerous URL shortners come and go, what will happen to those tweets that use these services? The Library of Congress looks to be working on a solution to preserve the links, but a solution will not come for some time.