Today Digital Archaeology – the exhibition that charts the disruptive moments of web design and celebrates the characters behind its radical evolution – opens its doors at the Metropolitan Pavilion, New York as part of Internet Week New York.

As a stark reminder of the importance of archiving the web for future generations, Abbie Grotke, Web Archiving Team Lead from the Library of Congress, will be delivering a keynote speech to appeal to every brand, every designer and every marketer in the world.

The talk, which will be streamed live here this evening (18:30), will see Abbie giving insights into both the importance of archiving the web as well as the Library’s current and future plans for preserving the web and digital content.

Commenting on the exhibition Grotke says: "It's exciting to see so many examples of the early web on display at the Digital Archaeology exhibition in New York.  As a cultural heritage institution, the Library of Congress believes we have to preserve web content so that this part of our cultural history is not lost to future generations."

Originally debuting in London last year, the exhibition brings together what many in the design industry consider to be the most significant sites of their time, each pushing the boundaries of how we play, interact and are entranced by technology.

Created by Jim Boulton of Story Worldwide, the sites themselves represent the achievement of a growing mastery of the format and how their creators skilfully, painstakingly and often lovingly develop shifts both subtle and seismic in the medium.

Boulton explains “These are artefacts of considerable historic and cultural relevance.  From a design and technology point of view they are groundbreaking for their time.  But it’s as much about the stories behind these sites, the motivations and the passions of their creators.  People that wanted to explore and exploit the medium in order to create something new, something beautiful and something that went from never having been seen before to becoming cultural experiences shared by millions, often overnight.”

The original exhibition held in Shoreditch, London, attracted the patronage of the British Library, which felt that these artefacts are of such cultural significance that they were to be preserved for posterity.  The New York show features 28 sites that reflect the most significant developments from the U.S, Japan and Europe and the fascinating personal histories behind them.  The sites run from the first ever website by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern and all are displayed on the appropriate hardware and software of the era. Here's a peek at the first website ever, on an original NeXT Station: http://ow.ly/i/cz4a

To view interviews of the designers behind the sites on display at Digital Archaeology New York please visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalArchaeology