The
Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, it provides free access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in
San Francisco, the Internet Archive has a historical web collection (the
Wayback Machine) of over 150 billion web pages, about 240,000
movies, more than 500,000
audio items (including over 70,000 live concerts), 1,800,000
texts, and 30,000 software items. A blog called
What’s New at the Internet Archive is also being maintained. An example of a historical document available at the Internet Archive is the
Canadian Income Tax Act, 1917 which can be read online or downloaded as a PDF. (Learn more about
Canadian Libraries and Internet Archive Canada online.)
