Sources & provenance
A collection of collections
How directories, fan sites, promotional downloads, saved folders, and web-archive recoveries became one record.
How the archive was assembled
No single website explains this archive
Buddy icons survive in mass-market directories, tiny fan pages, official promotional downloads, ZIP files, personal backups, defunct hosts, and web archives. A source collection is one distinct body of evidence; it is not necessarily one creator, owner, or website.
- Source collections
- 11,022sites, packs, directories, and recoveries
- Source observations
- 970,632recorded sightings with provenance
- Original files stored
- 521,585validated files, including grouped copies
Counts reflect the current collection and continue to grow. See the collection census.
Paths into the archive
What counts as a source collection
01
Public directories
Large galleries preserve category names, popularity cues, contributor handles, and the language people used while choosing an icon.
02
Fan pages and promotional sites
A band page, anime shrine, film campaign, or game download can reconnect an image to the community or media release that circulated it.
03
Packages and saved folders
ZIP files and personal backups may retain filenames, neighboring images, and directory order after their original webpages have disappeared.
04
Archived captures and recoveries
Web archives, mirrors, and visitor contributions can restore a URL, page title, date, or other trace to an otherwise contextless file.
Three documented examples
What a surviving collection can tell us
Directory profile · 01
Iconator
A March 2005 Iconator category capture advertised 135,731 icons. Its pages retained subject categories, contributor handles, ratings, and comments: evidence not only of the files, but of how a large directory organized participation around them.
What survives: browsing categories, contributor context, filenames, ratings, and comment counts.
Directory profile · 02
CoolBuddy
A June 2004 CoolBuddy animal-icons capture preserves themed navigation and contemporary instructions for installing an icon. That presentation explains how a visitor was expected to move a tiny GIF from the web into AIM.
What survives: category navigation, page labels, download context, and installation instructions.
Directory profile · 03
BadassBuddy
A May 2003 BadassBuddy capture advertised 1,189 icons and displayed categories, posting dates, and click counts. A contemporary essay also records how one viewer understood its animated icons as miniature cinema.
What survives: collection identity, categories, dates, popularity traces, and period criticism.
These captures document how the sites presented themselves. Their advertised totals are not counts of files recovered by this archive, and a file’s appearance on a directory is not proof that the directory created it.
Reading a source record
What stays attached to an icon
Collection identity
The site, package, directory, or recovery where this copy was observed.
Locations and paths
Page URLs, download URLs, archive entries, and folder paths that reconnect the file to its setting.
Source-supplied labels
Titles, alt text, and categories retained separately from later machine-assisted descriptions.
Observation time
When the evidence entered this archive—not automatically when the artwork was made.
An exact match can add another source observation without storing the same bytes twice. A resized or recompressed copy may remain as a variant. In both cases, duplication is evidence of circulation rather than rubbish to sweep from the catalog.
The record is still growing
Found another surviving collection?
Personal pages, promotional downloads, discs, old drives, and saved chat folders can each hold a missing piece of AIM’s visual culture.
Contribute a source or saved icon Read the preservation method