Like a paper library, we offer free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the printing disabled, and the general people.
We started in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was only beginning to grow in use. Like papers, the articles published online was but unlike newspapers, no one has been saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we operate with 625+ library along with other partners via our Archive-It program to identify important webpages.
As our internet archive dropped, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of additional printed works. Today our archive comprises:
Anyone using a free account may upload media into the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners worldwide to store copies of the work into particular collections.
Since we’re a library, we pay special attention to publications. Not everybody has access to some public or educational library that has a great set, so to give universal access we will need to provide digital versions of novels. We began a plan to digitize books in 2005 and we scan 1,000 publications every day in 28 areas around the world. Books published before 1923 are available for downloading, and thousands and thousands of contemporary books can be borrowed through our Open Library site. Some of those digitized publications are only available to this print disabled.