I have always been a fan of the Internet Archives, or as many call it (including me) the Wayback Machine. I use it to see what websites looked like years ago or to locate a website that has been taken down. The Internet Archive periodically takes snapshots of the web and archives it; a pretty neat concept. Users can browse through over 150 billion websites that have been archived since 1996. The Internet Archives work on many projects including the Bookmobile, Scanning Services, Archive-It, or the already mentioned Wayback Machine. One of the newest initiatives is the Digital Lending Library.
Checking out digital versions of books that are automatically returned after two weeks is as easy as logging onto the Internet Archive’s Open Library Site, announced digital librarian and Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. By integrating this new service, more than seventy thousand current books – best sellers and popular titles – are borrowable by patrons of libraries that subscribe to Overdrive.com’s Digital Library Reserve. Additionally, many other books that are not commercially available but are still of interest to library patrons are available to be borrowed from from participating libraries using the same digital technology.
- More than one million digital versions of older books are now available for free download in a variety of formats.
- Over 70,000 current digital books to those with a library card from many of the over 11,000 libraries that subscribe to the OverDrive service.
- Genealogical books from the Boston Public Library.
- How-to and technical book collection via the Internet Archive
- Marine life reference materials from the Marine Biological Laboratory and Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
- Spanish texts from Universidad Francisco Marroguin in Guatemala.