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E-Books for Visual Arts: Internet Archive - Text Archive

Guide to the many E-Book resources available for art and architecture.

Examples of Art & Architecture items inside the Internet Archive - Text Archive

What is the Internet Archive - Text Archive?

 

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. 

One of the best features of the Internet Archive is the many types of content they collect.  The Moving Image and Audio collections by Internet Archive are very substantial, as is the massive Text Archive.

Try the archive's site OpenLibrary for an interface to the published books on archive.org and links to other online book collections. 

More about using OpenLibrary can be found here.

Using Internet Archive - Text Archive

The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. 

  • Free to read, download, print, and enjoy.
  • Some have restrictions on bulk re-use and commercial use, please see the collection or the sponsor of a book.
  • By providing near-unrestricted access to these texts, we hope to encourage widespread use of texts in new contexts by people who might not have used them before.

Using OpenLibrary

Hints for Using OpenLibrary

OpenLibrary's goal is to create a webpage for EVERY book, but not every title has an e-book along with it.  To find OpenLibrary's over 1,000,000 books, you should to follow these susggestions:

  1. Put a checkmark in the box next to "Show only e-Books" to limit your search.
  2. Look at the icons next to the title of the book
  3. Use the More Search Options drop-down menu

Description: he word READ and a book

This book can be read online or downloaded in the following formats: PDF, plain text (.txt), Daisy, ePub, DjVu, Mobi or sent to a Kindle.

Description: he word BORROW and a book

This book can be borrowed if your library participates in Overdrive.com.  

Description: he word DAISY and a padlock

This format is for the visually impaired, and you need a "key" or special code from the Library of Congress to unlock this format.