Twitter announced on Wednesday that it will be donating its entire archive of public tweets on the microblogging site to the Library of Congress, the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and the largest library in the world.

The Library of Congress houses millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps, manuscripts, and, now, tweets.

Tweets have in just the last year become worthy of research because they are the fastest, most visible record of public reaction to events taking place around the world, like natural disasters, historic elections, and protests. After a six-month delay, every public tweet will be transferred to the Library of Congress for internal library use, non-commercial research, public display in the library, and preservation.

"Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world—from historic elections to devastating disasters," writes Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. "It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research."

Additionally, Google announced Wednesday morning the release of a new tool called Replay that allows users to relive the experience of a real-time reaction to important events that have taken place, like the retirement of Justice Stevens or the passage of Obama's health care bill.

Today, Twitter sees 55 million tweets posted to the site daily, according to the company, which also says that number is "climbing sharply." The site now has over 105 million registered users and 75% of its traffic comes from third-party services, external to Twitter.com. For comparison, Facebook has more than 400 million registered users.