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Science

Tweet archive to Library of Congress

If you've ever "tweeted," your words will soon be digitally archived in the U.S. Library of Congress.

If you've ever "tweeted," your words will soon be digitally archived in the U.S. Library of Congress.

Library director of communications Matt Raymond made theannouncement Wednesday on the library'sblog.

He said "every public tweet, ever, since Twitter's inception" in March 2006, will be included in the archive.

"Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition," Raymond wrote. "I'm no PhD, but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data."

Tweets can be posted from internet-connected computers or mobile devices, allowing people to share news and commentary from all over the world, including often mundane observations.

While each tweet is 140 characters or less, Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, amounting to billions of tweets since the beginning, according to a Twitter blog posted Wednesday by co-founder and creative director Biz Stone.

"It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research," Stone wrote. "A tiny percentage of accounts are protected, but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available."

Stone noted some restrictions to the access Twitter has granted to the library. He says there will be a six-month delay before the tweets can be archived for "non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation."

Raymond meanwhile highlighted various tweets he says he expects will draw much attention thefirst-ever tweetfrom Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and U.S. President BarackObama's tweetabout winning the 2008 election, for example.