This article is part 4 of a 4 part series on when to use the HathiTrust Digital Library, Google Books, and Internet Archive Books & Texts

Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/books)

Content Summary

  • Includes almost 7 million digitized books, and over 33 million items when combined with digitized texts 
  • Approximately 164K volumes from the University of California Libraries are available through the Internet Archive
  • Internet Archive’s digital volumes may also be accessed via the Open Library.
  • Features digitized books and texts from over 1,000 libraries, galleries, museums and cultural heritage organizations from around the world.

Content Sources

Many of the books and texts in the Internet Archive were digitized by its own far reaching digitization programs, but others have been contributed by hundreds of partners and individual users from around the world. All the volumes and texts in the Text Archive are open access - they can be read or downloaded by anyone anywhere in the world. 

Internet Archive was  a leader (as well as the digitization agent, storage provider, and digital library) for the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a consortium of private and public organizations that collaborated from 2005 to 2008 to digitize hundreds of thousands of books and make them publicly available. OCA partners included Microsoft, Yahoo!, the University of California Libraries, as well as libraries and museums from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. 

Access Options

  • Materials in the Internet Archive’s books and texts collections are open access for reading and downloading anywhere in the world. (The one exception is volumes in the “Books to Borrow” collection, which are only available for temporary checkout.)
  • Books and texts may be downloaded in many formats.

Special Features

  • Books to Borrow: The Internet Archive has an additional “Books to Borrow” collection of 2.3 million ebooks that are in-copyright and may be borrowed for up to two weeks by anyone who signs up for a free Internet Archive account. Internet Archive is a pioneer of Controlled Digital Lending, a set of protocols for the loan of digitized volumes that mimic the loaning practices for physical volumes, so that (at least in theory) libraries may legally loan out digital volumes that are still in copyright.  
  • Audio: Books and texts feature an audio option for users who want to hear them read out loud.
  • Images: Users looking for art and illustrations to download may use the Internet Archive’s Book Images collection of over 5.2 million items on Flickr.

Internet Archive Help 


This article is part 4 of a 4 part series on when to use the HathiTrust Digital Library, Google Books, and Internet Archive Books & Texts
https://help.hathitrust.universityofcalifornia.edu/support/solutions/articles/9000208441-internet-archive-books-texts
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