The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California that has an on-line library and archive of Web and multimedia resources. The Internet Archive was founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996.

This archive includes "snapshots of the World Wide Web" (archived copies of pages, taken at various points in time), software, movies, books, and audio recordings. To make the books available on the Internet, they are first placed into special scanning machines by volunteers and employees of the library. These machines take very high quality pictures of the books' pages, and then images and text of the books are freely available on the Website. This process is called "digitization". The old collections of films and sound are digitized in this way too before being made available online. All of the original books, movies, records and so on are stored in a giant warehouse in California, just like normal libraries store their smaller collections of books or other records. This collection is called the Open Library and aims to create "one web page for every book ever published." It was created by computer programmer and activist, Aaron Swartz.

The Archive also purchases new electronic books and loans them out to readers just like any other normal library. These electronic books can be read by viewing the Website, on the reader's own computer or electronic reading device, and even in special reading areas inside the Archive where the tables have touchscreens and computers built into them.

To ensure the stability and endurance of the archive, The Internet Archive is mirrored at Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, the only library in the world with a mirror. The Internet Archive makes the collections available at no cost to researchers, historians, and scholars. The Internet Archive is a member of the American Library Association and is officially recognized by the State of California as a library.

Related pages
Alexa Internet
Project Gutenberg

References

Other websites 

The Internet Archive home page
The Open Library - Digital library index
Wayback Machine - historical "snapshots" of the World Wide Web
Internet Archive Blogs - A blog from the team at archive.org
The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC)
Library of Congress, Web Capture
National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
Petabox, a useful invention created in collaboration with the Internet Archive
Pictures and descriptions of the Wayback Machine hardware in 2003 (prior to the Petabox), with cost information
Form 990-PF for Internet Archive (2003)
Archive-It 1.5 Press Release and Archive-It FAQ
Warrick  – a tool for recovering websites from the Internet Archive and search engine caches
Video interview with Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle (short intro in German language, the interview is in English with German subtitles)
The European Archive in Amsterdam
Recover websites from Web Archive and search engines caches
Internet Archive by Deepspeed media - Short documentary and interview with Brewster Kahle (hosted on YouTube)

Internet-related organizations
Archives
Non-profit organizations of California
1996 establishments in California