Then and Now: BFL Website Edition. Check out the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive!

| Jamie Thornton | , ,

The Internet Archive has reached a milestone this month, archiving 1 trillion web pages! https://blog.archive.org/trillion/ We are proud to be part of this shared digital memory. Check out what our website used to look like in 1998!

The Wayback Machine text and logo above the word THEN with an arrow pointing to the old brooks free library website from May 8, 1998. The site is minimalistic, mostly white with an image of the brooks free library building and a note that the page was last updated in November 1998.

And here we are today, in 2025

The Wayback Machine text and logo above the word NOW with an arrow pointing to the current brooks free library website from October 9, 2025. The site has much more color and more images, the menus are blue and red, with a white background.

You can try out the Wayback machine yourself at https://web.archive.org/. Here are some suggested pages to try searching:

  • AltaVista (Gone from the live web)
  • Amtrak
  • Apple
  • Archive.org
  • Blockbuster
  • Compuserve
  • GeoCities (Gone from the live web)
  • Google
  • HampsterDance (Gone from the live web)
  • Library of Congress
  • Microsoft
  • MTV News (Gone from the live web)
  • MySpace Tom
  • MySpace White House (Gone from the live web)
  • NASA
  • Netscape (Gone from the live web)
  • Pets.com (Gone from the live web)
  • Skype
  • TWA Airlines (Gone from the live web)

You can find screenshots of the above sites at this link here. Happy searching! If you have any questions about this resource contact us at the reference desk and we can show you how to navigate!