Internet Archive

**Elen** · 9th June 2016, 11:49

A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, and more.

I think this looks interesting, everything for free. Enjoy!

https://archive.org/

**Elen** · 9th June 2016, 15:35

Another interesting site.

An extensive list of E-Books (PDF format) of Old Knowledge in the way things were done 100+ years ago.
These books are a testimony of the skills, ingenuity and resolve of our fore fathers.

All these books are in Public Domain.
Author of this list is unknown!

http://oldknowledge.rodev.net/

**Innocent Warrior** · 18th June 2016, 04:45

Open Library

From Aaron Swartz' announcement of the library -

...Then I got a phone call. Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive was thinking of pursuing a project that I’d been trying to do literally for years....

I thought of the smartest programmers and designers I knew and gave them a ring, sat down for coffee with them, threatened to fly out to their homes and knock on their doors. In the end, we got together an amazing group of people — all sworn to secrecy of course — and in the past few months we’ve put together what’s probably the biggest project I ever worked on.

...Our goal is to build the world’s greatest library, then put it up on the Internet free for all to use and edit. Books are the place you go when you have something you want to share with the world — our planet’s cultural legacy. And never has there been a bigger attempt to bring them all together.

The full announcement can be read on Aaron's blog here.

openlibrary.org

**bsbray** · 18th June 2016, 23:24

I love the Internet archives and most of my ~1000 ebook library comes from its collection.

In the mid 1700's, before the French Revolution, there was a famous encyclopedia set of enlightenment philosophy and ideas, as well as general knowledge and technical information, in a set of what became about 20 or 30 volumes. To buy or even find a complete set at a library today is extremely difficult. Any complete set would no doubt be worth well over a thousand dollars, though it'd be difficult to guess how much. Maybe tens of thousands. But you can download a full set of this encyclopedia in pdf form from the archives above. (Did I mention that this encyclopedia set was illegal in pre-revolutionary France, and suppressed by the government? Great resource for cross-referencing Fomenko's work.) Just that alone is a tremendous resource. But that's just a drop in the bucket. Archiving knowledge like this is where the Internet really shines. This has to be one of the most important websites ever.