BOOKS ONLINE PART 2: INTERNET ARCHIVE

©2023 Donald R. Page last updated 2023-06-20

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ABSTRACT:  This is Part 2 of a series about books online on the internet.  Part 1 ealt with ebook formats and books on Google.  This Part deals with ebooks on Internet Archive, a free website with the goal of preserving the world's knowledge.  It has 37 million text items, many of which are out-of-copyrigh books which can be downloaded.  All text items are searchable on the website and the downloadable items are searchable on your own computer.  Other classes will discuss ebooks on other websites.  The notes and other related information, all with active internet links, is posted on  https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .

    WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

  1. Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu ) of Provo, Utah.
  2. The notes with active URLs and additional information in other notes and articles are posted at http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
  3. Tips:  (1)  To put an icon on your desktop for these notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon from in front of the address (above) in your browser onto your desktop.  (2)  To open a link, but keep your place in these notes, hold down the Control key while clicking the link.
  4. Problem for today:  What ebooks does Internet Archive have and how do you search and use them?

    5. INTERNET ARCHIVE (IA) https://archive.org

  5. Note - the word in the link is singular,"archive",not plural
  6. Wikipedia article -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
  7. IA us a free website with the goal of preserving the world's knowledge, so they scan everything, but only show the entire item if it is out-of-copyright
  8. Kinds of items on IA- scroll down to the 9 icons across the page and hover your cursor over each to see what that collection is.  
    1. "Snapshots" of the entire internet every few days
    2. Texts - scans of books, pamphlets, newspapers, ec. 
    3. Audio - music, concerts, phonograph records, CDs, radio broadcasts
    4. Videos - movies, TV shows, newscasts
    5. Much more
  9. There is a series of instructional articles in the boxes below the collection icons; these are on searching, downloading, checking out books, etc.
  10. IA formats for texts are pdf (Portable Document Format), as well as a few other formats
  11. All text items are searchable on the IA website and also when downloaded, unlike Google Books which are not searchable when downloaded, unless you OCR them (Optical Character Recognition) 
  12. IA has 37 million text items which includes books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, and much more.
  13. IA has contracts with many libraries, including the LDS Church History Library, so they post all the old LDS magazines, newspapers, conference reports, plus many out-of-copyright LDS books.
  14. IA also sponsors -- http://openlibrary.org/ -- a wiki where you can find information about books, their editions, libraries which have them, and where to buy hard copies.
  15. Searching
    1. Two types of searches: default is to search in metadata of all items; the other is to search in the text of all items - click Text Content to change the search.  
    2. For names or phrases use quotation marks, e.d. "Donalod R. Snow" or you get pages with the words, but not together.
    3. Try different combinations, e.g. "Snow, Donald R."
    4. Search results can be viewed in several ways, including more details - click on the icons at top right 

    16. CONCLUSIONS

  16. Internet Archive is a great source of texts, music, and even all old websites since 1996.
  17. IA has many ebooks that can be downloaded for free and are completely searchable.
  18. You can search for names, localities, phrases, etc., and download most of what you find. 
  19. No one book website has all the ebooks and we will discuss others in other classes.
    20.
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