Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an online library that contains books, movies, audio files, and software items. The Internet Archive also hosts the Wayback Machine, a tool that allows a user to view web pages in their current states from past dates. It functions as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and offers permanent access for researchers, historians, and the general public to view the historical collections online [1].
Contents
History and Overview
The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 and exists in San Francisco [1]. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections, and now hosts texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages [1]. The site includes over 150 billion web pages, about 240,000 movies, over 500,000 audio items including over 70,000 live concerts, over 1,800,000 texts, 1600 education items, and over 30,000 software items [2].
Features
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine lets users browse archived web pages beginning from 1996 up to a few months ago[3]. It works by having a user type a web address into the engine, and it searches for the dates it has archived. The resulting pages point to other pages archived around the same date [3]. The service has over 150 billion web pages archived.
Moving Image Archive
The moving image archive includes a library of free movies, films, and videos. It contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts [4]. Many of the videos are up for free download to all users of the library [4]
