When we mention the US Library of Congress we usually think about iconic manuscripts, much celebrated documents and general pieces of itinerary geniuses like the Declaration of Independence but that could all be about to change!

America’s oldest federal cultural institution has announced plans to start a new kind of archive and each one of us could have already become unwitting contributors. What is this exciting, highbrow, intellectual archive ermm archiving I hear you ask? Wait for it…. drum roll please…… tweets!

Yes, those 140 character glimpses into the mundane and exciting world of the lives of Twitter’s 100 million+ users worldwide are to be documented and will go on general display at the world’s largest library for the world and his wife to see. OK, maybe I’m going over the top here…

In reality the archive will contain all the tweets sent (and with over 55 billion posted a day they have a lot to choose from) but is only likely to show prominent tweets from key figures. Major tweets include those posted by Pesident Barack Obama on the day he was elected and the first ever tweet from Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey.

“I think it shows the tweets are an interesting part of the historical record,” said Twitter’s Alex MacGillivray.

“This project however is not about us, it is about our users and the fact they use the service to chronicle these amazing events. President Obama actually tweeted after he was elected. That is a big deal and it’s something he did.”

But what’s the point?, I hear you cry! The bods from the museum believe the tweets could help us to learn more about human behaviour and peoples’ reactions to major events. Clever stuff eh? So, next time you’re tweeting about how burnt your toast was at breakfast or how the man sat next to you on the bus should really have showered this morning, remember you could be re-writing history! Oohh, get you!

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