28 December 2018

Internet Archive

One of the best websites out there is the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/index.php).  I frequently visit it it for personal and professional reasons.

I the fun side are the thousands of movies available to watch and download.  And these are regular feature films plus documentaries and educational films.  Good stuff.

To continue fun are the thousands of songs.  If you are a Dead Head, visit the 13,000 concerts found at this link.

But these are just on the tip of the iceberg when you consider the texts available.  I have found several old books, that are out of print, for my research.  Additionally there are maps and atlases on the site.

Finally, there is the wayback machine that lets you see what a web page looked like 10 years ago.  This is especially useful for sites that are no longer online.

They note for example:

"The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.
....

As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:

330 billion web pages
20 million books and texts
4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts)
4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs)
3 million images
200,000 software programs"

Long story short, consider donating something to the Internet Archive.  Even $5 will help keep this free library open for all.