The many joys of Internet Archive

I attended a fun NFLS webinar last week and was reminded all over again about Internet Archive, a "non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more." Have you been there?

Here's just a tiny sampling of what you might find:

• special performances or albums by your favorite favorite band (mine is the Old 97s: audio, video)
• declassified CIA documents related to UFO sightings (and another 15,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts)
• fact-checked clips from TV news shows
• classic TV commercials

Definitely worth a look around!

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine also allows you to view more than 310 million webpages saved over time. Run into a dead link? Wonder what a webpage used to look like? Pop it into the Wayback Machine!

Here's what the SCLS webpage (www.scls.lib.wi.us) looked like back in 1997:

SCLS libraries interested in looking up your page - try www.scls.lib.wi.us/<3-letter delivery code> 

 

 

 

And here's the SCLS 1997 list of internet search engines:

(remember the days before Google?)

 

 

 

More articles and resources related to Internet Archive

• NFLS "30-Minute Tuesday_ Apps For All" webinar (the section about Internet Archive begins at the 8:00min mark)
• "Hey Jude" blog post with some Internet Archive highlights
• Archive.org and the Wayback Machine: Essential Research tool for Every Educator and Student
• Never trust a corporation to do a library's job - As Google abandons its past, Internet archivists step in to save our collective memory
• More information about Internet Archive projects
• TechBits: Digitized Materials in the Nooks & Crannies of the Internet