dons-internetarchive.html
INTERNET ARCHIVE TEXT ITEMS
©2020 Donald R. Snow --
Page last updated 2020-05-13
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ABSTRACT: Internet Archive is a free
website supported by donations, but they are not
required to use it. Their goal is to store the
entire world's knowledge electronically and make it
available to everyone for free. They do this by
digitizing and posting books, magazines, music,
movies, radio and TV broadcasts, concerts, software,
and more, and every few days they make and store a
"snapshot" of the internet. Items are organized in
thousands of collections and everything that can be
is searchable and downloadable. They have contracts
with libraries , universities, churches, and other
organizations to store and make available their
items. This class will discuss the text items that
it contains and how to search, use, and download
them. Additional classes and notes deal with
the other types of materials they collect. The notes
for this class and related articles, all with active
internet links, are posted on my website https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- The notes for this class and related articles,
all with active internet links, are posted on my
website https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your
desktop for the URL for these notes, or any
webpage, just drag and drop on your desktop the icon from in front of the address in your browser. (2) To open a link while
keeping your place in the original page, hold
down the Control key while clicking the link, so
the link opens in a new tab.
- The problem for today: What is the
Internet Archive and how to search it to find
and use text items.
- Other classes and notes discuss the WayBack
Machine, websites, audio, video, music, and more
on their website.
INTERNET ARCHIVE
- The Internet Archive is a free website
at https://archive.org/.
("archive" is singular here.)
- Quote from Wikipedia article about it -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
-- "The Internet Archive is an American Digital
Library with the stated mission of 'universal
access to all knowledge.' It provides free
public access to collections of digitized
materials, including websites, software
applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving
images, and millions of books."
- To accomplish their goal they have contracts
with libraries, universities, churches, and
other organizations to store and post their
materials and, periodically, they make a
snapshot of the entire internet -- everything
they post is available for free to anyone.
- Was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle in San
Francisco, California -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Kahle , and is supported entirely by donations,
but you don't have to donate to use it -- Kahle
has been a keynote speaker and presenter at
many family history conferences, including several RootsTech genealogy conferences in Salt
Lake City.
- Free accounts are available to receive
information, store information, upload data and
websites, and several other things, but you
don't need an account to access most things.
- The Internet Archive blog is at -- https://blog.archive.org/
.
INTERNET ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS
- The icons in the middle of the home page
(hover to see their titles) are: Web, Texts,
Video, Audio, TV, Software, Image, Concerts, and
Collections. Under each is the number of those
items, usually in the millions or 100,000s.
- The search box ABOVE the icons is for the
WayBack Machine which shows past versions of
webpages and is a discussion for another
class
- The search box BELOW the icons is for items or
collections and we will discuss it later.
- Clicking one of the icons gives you an idea of
the great numbers of items they have
- Texts -- 25 million items, including books,
ebooks, magazines, and other
texts
- Audio -- 10 million items
- Collections -- more than 800,000
collections, some containing millions of items
- To get back to the home page from any other
page click the Internet Archive icon in the
upper left corner.
- Scrolling down the home page shows their Top
Collections (I don't know what that means.) and
you can keep clicking at the bottom to open more
and more pages (hundreds of pages); the numbers
in the boxes are the number of items in that
collection; some have millions of items and some
just a few
- Items may be listed in more than one collection
- After clicking any collection, near the center
left is the word About -- gives a description
of that collection: Examples
- American Libraries shows the collections
from libraries in the U.S:
university and public libraries, the Family
History Library in Salt Lake City, the
Library of Congress, and more -- this entire collection
has more than 3M items
- California Digital Library has almost
200,000 items
- Click on the word Collection (center left) to
go back to view the collection
- The collections can be sorted by the tabs in
various ways, Title, Date Published, etc.
- To show the collection in a list click on the
icon to the right above the collection; click on the box there to show more details of
each item in the list; if the list is not too
long, you can hold down the Page Down key and
keep "fetching" more records until you have the
details of the entire collection in the list;
then use the CONTROL+F Find keyboard shortcut to
find what you want
SEARCHING
- Their search helps guide is: Search - A Basic Guide for Internet Archive --
https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360018359991-Search-A-Basic-Guide
- Searching is not always easy in Internet
Archive, since it contains so much, and I can't find anything about their
search syntax, e.g. does it make a difference
what order the words are in? Is there a
way to get exact expressions by using something
like quote marks? Does punctuation
matter? It does seem to do stem searches;
that is, if you search for Don, you get Don,
Donald, Donnie, etc.
- Search metadata vs Search text contents
- Click in the search box to show the options
for searches
- The search box defaults to Search metadata
which is the information the indexers included
about the source; searching for "utah
genealogy" gets more than 900 hits and "utah
family history" gets more than 1,600 hits
- The search box for Search text contents for
"utah genealogy gets more than 1M hits and
"utah family history" gets about 300,000
hits
- "united states" (without the quotes) gets 2M
hits for Search metadata and 13M for Search
text contents
- "genealogy" (without the quotes) gets 150,00
in metadata and 400,000 in contents
- "yearbook" (singular and no quotes) gets
40,000 in metadata and 300,000 in
contents
- On the left side of the search results are
filters to narrow your search
- Media types -- if you start in Texts, you
won't see other media types here
- Year, Topics & Subjects, Collection,
Creator, Language, etc. -- the numbers of
items in that collection are shown
- Clicking one or more of these selects only
those and it may take a few seconds to respond
-- you'll see the names of your selected
groups highlighted at the top of their
categories
- For some searches you see an icon to the
right of Topics & Subjects which opens up
many pages of subtopics; click as many as you
want and click Apply Your Filers
- The Advanced Search section allows you to include or exclude search terms in
various sections
- Ideas to try for searches -- go to Texts and
modify these for your own interests -- if there
are many, keep scrolling down and at the bottom
it will say "Fetching More Results ..." and keep
adding more items
- [your name] in Search text contents; also your name in various orders, surname first, etc.; also nicknames
- A state of the U.S., e.g. California
- "mormon migration" Denmark
- "fakebooks" in Search text contents -- these
are books with music lead sheets with the
melody line and chord symbols (I use these for
accordion concerts :=) )
BOOKS ON INTERNET ARCHIVE
- The Internet Archive has millions of books
with many helpful in family history
- Some books still in copyright can only be
checked out for 14 days and not downloaded
permanently -- you need an Open Library
membership (free) for Internet Archive to borrow books
- Books and text items are every-word searchable
and most can be downloaded and
the downloads are every-word
searchable
- Examples of books on Internet Archive for Utah
family history research
- Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah by Frank
Esshom - pictures, biographies, and histories
- Church Chronology (several editions) by
Andrew Jenson - day-by-day chronology of
ships, immigration, happenings, travels,
details - completely searchable
- Times and Searsons - 6-year periodical
published in Nauvoo 1839-1946
- Journal of Discourses, Conference Reports,
Improvement Eras, Women's Exponent, many
more
- Ward and stake records
- Books by Orson Pratt, Parley P. Pratt, John
Taylor, B.H. Roberts
- Early histories of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints
SOME FAMILY HISTORY TEXT COLLECTIONS OF
INTEREST
- Below ae a few of the many collections of
interest to genealogists -- besides family
history you will find many other collections for
your other interests
- These lists are only a sampling; when you look
at these collections on Internet Archive, you
will see the numbers of items included in each
and it's in the millions for some
- There is a search folder for records added in
different time periods, so if you keep track of
when you search, you can just search additions
since the last time you looked.
- LIBRARIES -- Family History Library, Brigham
Young University Library, Church History Library
(LDS), David O. McKay Library (BYU-Idaho),
European Libraries, Boston Public Library,
Indianapolis Public Library Yearbooks, The
Boston Library Consortium, The Newberry Library,
The Library of Congress, New York Public Library
- UNIVERSITIES -- BYU Campus Publications,
University of Michigan Books, University of
Pennsylvania Libraries, Kansas State University
Yearbooks, Kansas State University Newspapers,
UCLA Yearbook Collection
- MILITARY -- U.S. Military Pensions, British
Army List, British Navy Lists, WWII Archive
- UNITED STATES -- California Digital
Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, North
Carolina Digital Heritage Center, Pennsylvania
Germans, State Library of Massachusetts
- NEWSPAPERS -- Kentucky Digital Newspapers,
Newspapers, Daily Colonial Newspaper Collection,
The PastPages News Homepage Archive, Giganews
Usenet Collection
- BOOKS, MAGAZINES, and JOURNALS -- Internet
Archive Books, Journals, JSTOR Early Journal
Content, Computer Magazine Archives, Computer
Newsletters: User Groups and Flyers, Million
Book Project, The Magazine Rack
- FAMILY HISTORY -- Genealogy, Passenger and
Crew Vessel Lists for New York, NY 1897-1957,
Reclaim the Records (mostly vital records of
Eastern U.S., Rutland Historical Society,
Scottish Family History, Congregational Library
of the, Congregational Association, UF Family
Search
- MAPS -- USGS Maps, USGS Maps of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Utah, etc.
- UNITED STATES CENSUSES
- All U.S. Federal
Censuses
- To find them for a state, search for
"federal census [state]" (without the quotes); can be sorted in several ways and you can
print or download any you want in several formats, including
pdf
- Has a Census Reader to show two pages of the
census side-by-side; click to turn pages;
works fast for showing the pages
- Internet Archive does NOT have a U.S. census index, so use the index on FamilySearch or Ancestry, etc., to find film number before looking on Internet Archive
- U.S. censuses were filmed several times and some parts are clearer in some sets than others, so check here, too -- other online sources are FamilySearch Historical Records, Ancestry, and HeritageQuest Online
- LDS PUBLICATIONS - some were mentioned
above
- General Conference Reports
- LDS Church Magazines -- includes Ensign,
Improvement Era, Relief Society Magazine,
Children's Friend, Women's Exponent,
etc.; magazines since 1971 are on Gospel
Library
- LDS Church Magazines in other languages - Liahona of Mexican Mission,
Church magazines in German, Scandinavian, and
Dutch
- Latter-day Saints Millennial Star (England)
COMMENTS AND CONCLUSIONS
- The number and types of collections and items
here is staggering and they are adding new
collections all the time -- My problem is that I
lose track of time while looking through
it
- For your genealogy research consider
university and library collections near the
locations of your ancestors, since they may have
local collections
- For other interests or, if your kids or
grandkids need help for school, there are
collections such as the Khan Academy videos;
search for things like "mathematics khan"
(without the quotes)
- In other classes we will discuss the WayBack
Machine (old versions of websites), audio,
video, and other types of collections on
Internet Archive.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group Home Page
or
Don Snow's Class Notes Page
.