The Library of Congress said today it will digitally archive every public tweet since Twitter's launch in March 2006.

On the Library of Congress blog Matt Raymond writes, "That's a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day with the total numbering in the billions."

The Library of Congress announced the news in this tweet: Library acquires ENTIRE Twitter archive. All tweets.

Raymond offers more details about the Library acquiring the entire Twitter archive. "So if you think the Library of Congress is 'just books,' think of this: The Library has been collecting materials from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000.  Today we hold more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress."

A few examples of important tweets include:

The first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (http://twitter.com/jack/status/20), President Obama's tweet about winning the 2008 election (http://twitter.com/barackobama/status/992176676), and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/786571964) and (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/787167620).

Earlier today Google announced a new search option that allows users to view an archive of tweets on any topic in a timeline format.