.NU Domain and Swedish Royal Library Team to Preserve Internet History
Thursday March 20, 7:05 am ET

MEDFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2003-- The .NU Domain Ltd has partnered with the Royal Library, National Library of Sweden to preserve Internet history. On April 1, 2003 the Royal Library will unveil the web heritage of Sweden and make public for the first time the Swedish Web pages that they have archived.

The Royal Library is charged with the task of preserving all Swedish printed materials for posterity. This obligation was laid down in 1661 in an ordinance from the Royal Chancery. In 1997 the Royal Library began its endeavor to preserve all Swedish digital materials. This project will provide a true picture of the evolving Swedish Internet space for future generations. .NU Domain Ltd is the only top level domain that actively supports this project. With the assistance of the .NU Domain the Swedish Royal Library has been able to ensure that all .NU domain name web sites in Sweden are included in this historic piece of work.

Every day, between four and eight million pages are created on the Internet and the same numbers of Web pages change or disappear. With the average life span of a web page being just 36 hours, the question of how will the people of the future understand the use and evolution of the Internet occupied the minds of many historians. The archiving of the Swedish Web pages will help provide answers to those questions.

In Sweden the .NU domain has become very popular because of its significance in the Swedish language (nu means now in Swedish). "The three large Swedish domains are .NU, .se, and com. The help of .NU Domain is very valuable for us, as .se names only constitute half of the Swedish domains," says Allan Arvidsson of the Royal Library, National Library of Sweden.

Since 1997, the Royal Library has taken bi-annual snapshots of all Web pages with Swedish owners through a search robot. In practice this means covering all .se Web pages, most .NU pages, and a number of generic domains (.com, .net, .org). While .NU Domain has provided the Royal Library with the domain names of its Swedish customers since the start, the generic domains are difficult, as there is a multitude of registrars to approach.

The first snapshot in 1997 showed a Swedish Internet with four million pages, or 140 gigabytes (GB) of information, the last snapshot in 2003 showed about 20 million pages and 1,809 GB. "Researchers can now look at sites from the different periods and compare them," notes Arvidsson. For example, you can see the escalation of advertising from 1998 to now.

During the past five years Internet users have learned a lot about Web-site design, and the Royal Library's effort to preserve historical archives of complete Web sites illustrates those changes graphically. An example is the contrast of two popular .NU web sites, webmusic.nu and film.nu, where you can see how has webs sites have been refined with more graphics and easier navigation.

About .NU Domain Ltd

.NU Domain Ltd, a US-based private corporation, is the leading commercial Top Level Domain Name Registry serving Northern Europe. It is also the only Top Level Domain in the world that can support the complete UNICODE international character set in Web addresses, using its unique patent-pending technology. .NU Domain Ltd targets international end users and the small office/home office (SOHO) market. Besides its free blogging service at http://www.blogga.nu, .NU Domain Ltd also offers domain name parking services for customers who need to lock in a domain name but have no immediate plans to use it, the .NU InstantWeb Service that provides a quick, five-page mini Web site, or URL forwarding for your .NU domain name to a GeoCities, AOL or other personal Web site without a unique domain name, and .NU InstantMail Forwarding so AOL, Hotmail and other mail service users can have a unique .NU e-mail address. You can visit .NU Domain Ltd on the World Wide Web at http://www.nunames.nu.

Note to editors: Art available, photos of Allan Arvidsson and Royal Library and sample of old and new websites 1998 and 2003.

     .NU Domain Ltd
     J. William Semich, 508/359-5600
     bill@nic.nu

     or
     MacSweeney PR
     Laura MacSweeney, 781/395-6420
     lmacsweeney@attbi.com