Visiting National Library of Luxembourg (BnL) For Luxembourg Web Archive

Luxembourg is always on my travel destination list, but not because it has the highest GDP per capita or the scenic views of Luxembourg City. My interest is more personal—they manage the .lu domain name and house the Luxembourg Web Archive at the Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg.

Yes, there are copies of my website and blog at National Library of Luxembourg. I found out about this years ago when I looked at my website on the Internet Archive, where it showed two of the crawler names as BLN-002 and NationalLibraryOfLuxembourg. That’s how I learned about the existence of the Luxembourg Web Archive. Under the law Loi du 25 juin 2004 portant réorganisation des instituts culturels de l’Etat, the BnL follows an inclusive collection policy for digital legal deposit. This means legal deposit applies to Luxembourg publishers, which the BnL interprets to include all websites under the “.lu” top-level domain. And as you can see, https://blog.louie.lu and https://louie.lu fall under this category.

Unfortunately, the Luxembourg Web Archive can only be accessed in-person at the BnL computer. This made me want to visit the library ever since I found out.

The chance finally arrived. After finishing my conference in Leuven, Belgium, we took the train to Luxembourg and arrived at the BnL around 6:50 PM. While I was still amazed by the library architecture itself, I tried to access the computer but it required a library account. I then found out that although the library closed at 8 PM, the info desk closed at 7 PM, which meant I couldn’t apply for a library account. We visited the library the next morning, and using my foreign driver license to apply for a library account, I finally accessed the BnL computer!

In the presence of Nous Henri, Grand-Duc de Luxembourg, Duc de Nassau — well, His Royal Highness’ portrait at least — I finally access to the Luxembourg Web Archive and see my website archive!

I’m not worried about my blog disappearing someday after I’m gone. I know it’s well preserved in the Luxembourg Web Archive, backed by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg itself—including this post you’re reading right now.