About

The Internet Archive (archive.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive has an historical web collection (the Wayback Machine) of 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. And we’re growing bigger every day!

The Internet Archive’s Collections Team started this blog to highlight new collections and interesting items. We hope you enjoy it!

53 thoughts on “About”

  1. Berry Kessinger

    I have recorded & restored thousands of 78s from the 1920s & early 1930a, mostly the mainstream jazz of that era. Most are from 78 collections I have bought & sold, and others are from files shared with me by others. Ihave spent thousands of hours on this over the past 5 years. I have more than 4,000 songs on more than 150 CDs, and an alphabetized catelog (by artist). I would be happy to share them with you, if you are interested. Please advise.

  3. Debralee Fader

    Thank you for the archive regarding my website. For a brief moment, I was able to view the website. It made my day! After moving, I lost the original copy of the website, and have been unable to reconnect with the site webmaster. Is there any way to restore the site? Could not view videos. How can I learn more about the work yhat you are doing? What a much needed service!

    Debra Lee Kristian- Fader

  4. Steve Brooks

    Thanks to all the contributors and enthusiasts to this invaluable web-site. Keep up the good work.

    For 2 years I’ve been searching for the Hoffman Soda radio commercial [jingle] from the 1960’s -“the prettiest girl I ever saw was drinking Hoffman’s through a straw.”
    If anybody has it or knows where I can find it please let me know.
    Thanks

    1. Greg Lance

      Steve,
      Go to http://www.musicradio77.com
      Look under “audio section” and play some
      old WABC radio airchecks. You’ll find one
      during a Dan Ingram show recording circa
      1961 or 1962. Most of it complete.
      greg

    2. Len

      Did you ever find the song, “The prettiest girl I ever saw was sipping hoffman through a straw”?

  7. Phineas

    I have shared Steve Brooks’ desire to track down the Hoffman’s jingle. My wife says it was from an old song she knew, in which the prettiest girl was sipping cider, not a Hoffman’s soda. And the Web seems to confirm that, with many entries referring to cider. I guess that the Hoffman folks modified it to suit their commericial needs.

  8. Bob Heising

    I need help in locating a news clip from the archives. The title is “Knife Throwing Mother 1950s” All I have found out is that it was found at archives.org but I have been unable to locate the clip. My wife is one of the people in the clip and would like to get copy for family. The clip was actually filmed on ar about 1946. Any help would be appreciated and treasured.

  10. PJ Boe

    To Berry Kessinger; yes, PLEASE post your collection! I am
    not affiliated in any way with internet archive, but I think
    the uploading process is fairly straight forward. There are
    instructions somewhere on the site. Sounds like you have
    some real classics and it’s very kind of you to be willing
    to share them.

    pjb/

  11. Melissa Martin

    Hello
    I am very excited to peruse your collection. I was also wondering if you ever take volunteers. I am hoping to enter the Master’s in Library Science program at SJSU, and would like to gain experience in archiving. I haven’t had an opportunity to work in a Library since high school! I used to bind books there, and shelve using the Dewey decimel system. I would love to get up-to-date, and help you with your collection!
    Thank you for your time and suggestions.

  12. Tom Holahan

    Hi. Just want to let you know about a situation that I’ve observed. When I access your home page, the first thing I do is click on the “Most Recently Added Items.” Since I download a lot of your movies, this feature allows me to keep abreast of any new items. However, I’ve noticed that some of the new items don’t appear at the top of the list. Frequenrly, they are added on subsequent pages, which makes it more difficult to find them. Just thought you’d like to know. Also, I really appreciate your website. It has given me access to films I never knew existed. Keep them coming! Thanks.

    2. internetarchive

      Hi Tom. I’ve checked into this a little and it’s is difficult to verify. If you can provide me specific examples I’d have a better chance to resolve it.
      Thanks.
      Best, Jeff

  14. James

    Hello,

    I was wondering if you accept guest post for your blog. If you do, I would like to submit a few. You can see a sample of my work at LaptopComputers.org under the author James Mowery. I’ve also written for several high-profile blogs like Mashable, Perfromancing, and CMSWire. Thank you for your time.

    – James

  15. Raja Naveed Sarwar

    Good website, in fact a hoard of knowledge. Thanks for sharing nice and valuable collection I have ever seen.

  16. zard243

    As a filmmaker, I find your Netlabels section invaluable. In my short film “Showerdrops” [ http://vimeo.com/13146576 ] I used some music by a Ukrainian artist found in your collection. The Netlabels section is one of the BEST online music resources around. The feature films section is invaluable for finding films to burn to DVD to watch with my family. The Texts section is nice for finding obscure books (Also, great work on OpenLibrary)… All of IA is absolutely a Godsend for me. Thank you ever so much, words can’t adequately express my utter gratitude.

  18. Robert Ballantyne

    Bowen Island is located at the mouth of North America’s most southerly fjord, and within sight of downtown Vancouver, BC, Canada. A small municipality occupies the lowlands, but much of the island is still fairly wild.

    Parks Canada (PC) has proposed to create a National Park Reserve on Bowen, and become responsible for about 40% of the land area. PC has said they will proceed only if the municipality agrees. For several months now PC has been developing their concept and holding public meetings. This is a significant issue in the life of our community. I have been making audio recordings of the major public events and posting them in the Community Audio section of the Internet Archive. This is the most recent:
    http://www.archive.org/details/ParksCanadaPresentPreliminaryParkConceptToBowenIsland

    I am writing to say how much I appreciate the fact that that this level of detail can be available on The Internet Archive for us to refer to in the current discussions. In the future, I think that anyone who is interested in tracking processes of community involvement and consultation will find this case history instructive.

    Many thanks!

    1. internetarchive Post author

      We appreciate donations. You can bring them of send them to Internet Archive, 300 Funston, San Francisco, CA 94118.

  20. Christina Butts

    I wrote a small kids color picture book which was assigned an ISBN number under the online publisher I used, Lulu.com. I’m also listed with Google’s online Books and in retailers. Do authors like me get archived too? Do you need a copy sent?

  21. Cynthia Whyte

    Hi,
    Thanks for all you do but I would like to find out how I can access – successfully – a site which used to belong to my friend who died suddenly without leaving instructions for us Moderators to do something with the site afterwards.

    I see that I can access the Home page but then I do not seem to be able to go any further without being told to try later or I have used it too much!! It is a Medical Research site which is for Rare Adipose Disorders and which we really need to access some of the information stored in it to give to Doctors who just do not have the knowledge which we had accumulated over years of research into rare diseases. There are some very pertinent – still today – knowledge which needs to be acquired. How can we do this?

    Please help us, this really is a question of life and death for those of us who suffer from these disorders.

    Thank you,
    Cynthia

  22. Francis

    Simply awesome. Preserving historical items from the internet which can be used as reference for the next generation. The Internet is continuously and rapidly growing, more and more info are becoming available, and preserving (archiving) them for the future is a very important part of history of cyberspace. Keep it up Internet Archive Team.

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  25. Kate O'Hara

    A friend of mine did a PBS special on Grace Kelly in 1981 he moved and lost the film…does anyone know how to get that information or have that information. I would like to surprize him as he does a lot of fund raising for non profits. Please email me at kateohara123@hotmail.com put in heading Grace Kelly. Thank you

  27. Stephanie Keeth

    I just saw the above post for your address to send books to and I am thrilled! I love my books and do not like getting rid of them but since I have a preference to hardbacks I can only keep so many in my home. Knowing your working to preserve the written word gives me joy in sending y’all some to hopefully add to the collection.

  30. Ron

    With havin so much content do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright violation?
    My website has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either written myself or outsourced but it appears a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my permission. Do you know any techniques to help reduce content from being ripped off? I’d really appreciate it.

  31. Fredrik

    I love the Internet Archive! It is a wonderful resource, and in particular I have made much use of the Moving Images collections. However, at times I find it a bit chaotic. It is hard to find the really good stuff among all the noise. To somewhat improve upon this situation I have started a blog about movies I found at the Archive and enjoyed. You can find the blog here: Silver in a Haystack.

    I hope I can pay back for some of all the enjoyment that the Internet Archive has given me.

  32. Louie Ludwig

    Hello, fine archivists.

    I’ve found a mislabeled/cataloged file in your moving pictures archives. The file titled “Shape of the Future,” which is described as a series of outtakes from advertising footage (https://archive.org/details/0612_Shape_of_the_Future_The_18_10_57_00) actually appears to be, at the front end, stock from a Sunoco commercial and, at the back, footage taken of people working on Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign.

    I point this out not (only) because I’m a stickler, but because there may be some historical value in the McCarthy campaign footage and you might want to find the original.

    Thanks for your fine work.

    Louie Ludwig

  33. Robert Roy

    I was wondering if you could help me find the names, or the actual short films that aired after the first showing of the movie “The Great Escape”. It was aired in two parts on separate nights in 1967 on CBS. One of them was named “Rain” (I think) and the other was a stop motion/animated Monty Python’ish type film. I have been searching for these short films for some time and would like to see them again,

    Thanks in advance for any help on this

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  35. adele casamassima

    hello everyone, this is a fantastic tool for my work! I wanted to ask for your advise as I am looking for webpages from European websites but all I can get from my searches in archive.org are images from the US websites. Any advise about how to use archu=ive.org to extract snapshots from European websites? do you know about any other web resource enabling me to do that?

    thank you in advance for helping out

    adele

  36. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

    What a PAIN IN THE ASS your new website design is. I am so goddam tired of peurile programmers designing websites when they have no clue as to how users work and what they need. I used to be able to search for texts; apparently I can no longer do that. I have to first search for all sorts of crap, then filter down to what I really need. Although the advanced search allows one to specify a search in texts, it’s slower than molasses. What a waste of time. As this site has no respect for its users and their time, I have no respect for this site. Buh-bye.

    1. Andrew Bontrager

      You can still use the classic site (hopefully forever, but who knows). Under the mediatypes, you should see a link called Services/Exit_Beta or something similar. I totally agree with you about the new interface. It seems much more cluttered to me than the classic site. All the new images and item choices on a details page eat up precious bandwidth, so I’ll be using the classic version as long as possible.

  37. Margot Robinson

    You should be ashamed of yourselves. Cutting shows down into One minute segments renders them useless for viewing online and you ought to know it. There is no way you can say that this is truly a service to anyone. Charging people $25 to view an entire episode is doubly shameful. Not everyone has the money to pay this, and not everyone has the time. I think cutting the shows into such small and useless segments is an underhanded way to extract money from people who simply want something useful. And if they can’t afford it, they can ” just eat cake.” Put the full episodes up in the TV News Archive, and do a real public service instead of making it truly useful only to people with money.

  38. Kathy Graves

    I am the current President of the Siskiyou County Historical Society. I noticed you have a free download of a book entitled, “History of Siskiyou County” by Wells. The Hsitorical Society is under the impression (although a little more research needs to be done) that we hold the current copyright on that book. If that proves to be the case we would request that you remove the title from your free downloads. If you have any documents that show permission was given to allow you to include that book in your array of titles, we would like to see it.

    Thank you.

  39. Bob

    How do you download anything? There does not seem to be any way to download anything. I used to be able to download from Archive.org simply by right clicking.

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