Internet Archive
archive.org
Non-profit digital library offering free access to millions of books, movies, music, software, and archived web pages.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library of free texts, audio, video, software and web pages. It is best known for the Wayback Machine, which saves old versions of websites, but it also holds millions of books, many that you can borrow digitally, plus concerts, films, music and historic software.
You can browse by collection or search across everything. Some items are in the public domain and some are lent under limited-access rules, so availability varies. It is one of the most important preservation projects on the web, and donations keep it running.
Why it is useful
Archive.org is the umbrella library behind the Wayback Machine, Internet Arcade, and millions of scanned books and historical recordings, all free to browse and much of it free to borrow or download. It's one of the largest freely accessible digital preservation efforts in existence.
More in Archives
Other archives you might not have heard of.
- EuropeanaDigital platform aggregating millions of cultural heritage items from European museums, galleries, and archives.
- Wikimedia CommonsWikipedia's free media repository, holding tens of millions of freely licensed images, audio and video files with licence details for each.
- NASA Image and Video LibraryOfficial NASA archive of over 140,000 images, videos, and audio files free to use without copyright restrictions.
- World Digital LibraryUNESCO and Library of Congress project providing free access to rare manuscripts and cultural artifacts worldwide.
- HathiTrust Digital LibraryCollaborative digital library with 17 million digitized items from research libraries worldwide, including millions of public-domain books with full-text search.
- TroveThe National Library of Australia's aggregated search across newspapers, books, images, and archives from libraries and museums nationwide.