Memes are part of the cultural heritage of the digital age and this library will preserve these contents that will explain social and cultural situations in the future.
In the digital age, communication has been transformed and now viral images, videos and expressions define part of contemporary culture. Memes have become a form of expression that mixes humor, irony and social commentary in a file that is easy to share and understand.
From them new expressions, concepts or ideas emerge. Since 2009, the ‘Meme Library’ has been collecting memes that have been viral on the internet in Spain to compile this cultural phenomenon that emerged on social networks.
What is the ‘Meme Library’
The ‘Meme Library’ has been developed in response to the exponential growth of memes on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. It is an attempt to preserve a part of contemporary culture that, due to how ephemeral everything is in the digital world, could be lost in the constant flow of information.
This ‘Meme Library’ is an online or physical space where meaningful and representative memes of a particular era or topic are collected, cataloged and preserved. It consists of an archive that documents the evolution of memes depending on the context.
- Utilities
This library has been created for five main functions.
Firstly, it is responsible for preserving digital culture, because these contents, despite being part of modern popular culture, are ephemeral and therefore susceptible to being lost if not stored.
In turn, it serves as a form of cultural analysis for researchers, since they are not just an entertainment archive, but rather have symbology and reflect values and mentalities of society at that time. For the same reason that this bibliography serves to make historical documentation.
But not only that, but memes have become a reflection of national identity and how it is manifested, today, through social networks. And by putting all these applications together, the ‘Meme Library’ has become an educational platform where others are shown the evolution of memes, their formats and the creativity to design them.
