Lazarus Archive
About the archive
Since 1994 Lazarus has recovered software, archives and digital lives lost to bit rot, dead formats and shuttered services. Today it is one of the largest verified digital archives in the world, and every item in it is free to access.
Thirty-two years
From a church hall and two old computers to 41,206 restored titles and 212 partner archives.
1994
In March, a few volunteers in a borrowed church hall in Vancouver hold the first Lazarus rescue day. The first disk they recover becomes LZ-00001.
1995
TriOptimum becomes the first company to deposit its retired products with the archive.
1996
The first partner archives join: two university libraries and a computer club that had been rescuing disks of its own.
1999
The monthly rescue days end after five years and some 1,800 restored titles. Their work becomes the Floppy Rescue collection.
2006
The emulation toolkit is released to partner archives, twelve years to the day after the first rescue.
2011
Lazarus accepts its first personal archives, under the consent policy that later shaped the Half-Life brief.
2014
Vigil begins checking every object in the archive, continuously.
2021
Lazarus moves into Frothly’s new Vancouver office, with its first permanent reading room.
2023
The archive marks its thirtieth year.
2026
The forty-one-thousandth title is restored in July. In August the search index moves to new storage, and re-cataloguing begins.
Who we are
Lazarus is a program of Frothly, an independent, not-for-profit research institute. It is led by Miranda Lawson and staffed by archivists, engineers and conservators in Vancouver, among them the archivist J. R. Isidore.
The work is shared with 212 partner archives: libraries, museums, record offices, broadcasters and enthusiast societies that hold copies of the archive, lend equipment and expertise and bring their own rescued media to Vancouver.
Re-cataloguing
9,324 of 41,206 records are back online.
On Aug 19, 2026 the archive’s search index moved to new storage. The move took a little over three hours, during which search returned incomplete results. No archived material was affected; the incident is recorded on Frothly’s status page.
The move was also the moment to retire a catalog format that had served since 2006. Every record is now being brought up to the fourth edition of the Lazarus Descriptive Standard: its description reviewed, its fixity re-verified by Vigil and its rights checked, before it returns to the online catalog. Records are re-catalogued in batches from every collection, so that each collection is represented while the work continues. New restorations go straight into the new catalog.
Until its record returns, every title remains preserved, verified and available in the reading room. Gaps in the catalog numbering are records still waiting their turn.
Free to access
Every item in the archive is free to access. Lazarus charges no fees, sells no copies and asks for no account. Titles are seen in the reading room in Frothly’s Vancouver office and in reading rooms run by partner archives, where software runs in emulation on the machine it was made for and everything else is shown in formats that current equipment can open.
A small number of personal archives are sealed at the request of the people who made them, and open on the date they chose. The records of sealed archives are public, so that anyone can see what the archive holds even when they cannot yet see inside it.
Fidelity
How much of the original survived recovery.
- Bit-exact
- Every bit of the original was recovered, and independent reads agree. The image is indistinguishable from the medium on the day it was made.
- Complete
- All of the work was recovered. A small number of damaged sectors were rebuilt from redundant data or a second copy, and every repair is documented.
- Reconstructed
- Rebuilt from several damaged copies, none of them complete on its own. The result is whole, but no single original ever held it.
- Partial
- Some of the work could not be recovered. What survives is usable, and the gaps are recorded in a damage map kept with the record.
- Fragmentary
- Only fragments survive. They are kept because nothing else of the work does.
Rights
The terms on which each work is shown. More on rights and orphan works.
- Public domain
- No one holds rights in the work, usually because it was made by a public body or its term has expired.
- Open license
- Released by its creator as freeware or under an open license that permits copying.
- Released for access
- The rights holder, or their estate, has given Lazarus permission to show the work to anyone, free of charge.
- Licensed to Lazarus
- Shown under an agreement with the rights holder that allows access in reading rooms but not copying.
- Orphan work
- The rights holder could not be found after a documented search. The work is shown under the Lazarus orphan works policy, and withdrawn if a rights holder asks.
- Sealed
- Held at the request of its creator or their estate, and opened only on the date they set. The record is public; the contents are not.
Catalog numbers
Catalog numbers are issued in order as each restoration is finished, and never reused. LZ-00001 is the first disk recovered, on the first rescue day in March 1994. LZ-41000, restored in July 2026, is the forty-one-thousandth. Record pages live at addresses like /lz-00001/.
Read about the Lazarus program on frothly.org, the Half-Life brief, the essay Kipple, the Seepage report, or listen to the Lazarus team on Audio Logs.