What is the Internet Archive? It's a collection of all types of media: books, movies, music, images, audio, web pages, software, etc.
A while ago, they came to my attention because of their announcement of the National Emergency Library, which is, in their words, "a temporary collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed." They operate the same way as a normal library, just online, lending out digital copies of books for two-week periods. However, the National Emergency Library has temporarily suspended all wait-lists for checking out books, allowing any number of people to check out a book at a given time in light of the pandemic, at least until June 30, 2020. This is to make up for the fact that many people no longer have access to the physical books at their local libraries. The library has 1.4 million modern books, as well as 2.5 million public domain books that are always available. It's worth checking out some of the books they have here (I recommend 1984 or The Stranger).
As for the rest of the Internet Archive, I was slightly disappointed by the lack of modern material, but that's understandable, due to copyright concerns. Their primary purpose is to archive old classics and deliver educational content, so I would recommend using it to try and find documentaries. And if I ever wanted to watch some 1950s black and white sci-fi like this one, this is the place I would start.
As for their repository of web pages, I was particularly impressed at their effort to log past versions of websites over the years. As an example below, I searched for www.firstwebpage.com and found what this random website looked like in 1998, and how it has changed over the years. It's fun to play around with. Even if I personally don't have any use for it, it's good to know that someone will be preserving this era of history.
And finally, I should warn you that the website is not very effective at sorting out inappropriate content from their educational setting, so use it wisely.
A while ago, they came to my attention because of their announcement of the National Emergency Library, which is, in their words, "a temporary collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed." They operate the same way as a normal library, just online, lending out digital copies of books for two-week periods. However, the National Emergency Library has temporarily suspended all wait-lists for checking out books, allowing any number of people to check out a book at a given time in light of the pandemic, at least until June 30, 2020. This is to make up for the fact that many people no longer have access to the physical books at their local libraries. The library has 1.4 million modern books, as well as 2.5 million public domain books that are always available. It's worth checking out some of the books they have here (I recommend 1984 or The Stranger).
As for the rest of the Internet Archive, I was slightly disappointed by the lack of modern material, but that's understandable, due to copyright concerns. Their primary purpose is to archive old classics and deliver educational content, so I would recommend using it to try and find documentaries. And if I ever wanted to watch some 1950s black and white sci-fi like this one, this is the place I would start.
As for their repository of web pages, I was particularly impressed at their effort to log past versions of websites over the years. As an example below, I searched for www.firstwebpage.com and found what this random website looked like in 1998, and how it has changed over the years. It's fun to play around with. Even if I personally don't have any use for it, it's good to know that someone will be preserving this era of history.
And finally, I should warn you that the website is not very effective at sorting out inappropriate content from their educational setting, so use it wisely.
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