Internet Archive - Sources of Untold Riches

Interested in finding moving images of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 in the Sea of Tranquility?  How about a reading of Robert Frost's poetry, a Kafka short story in German, a recording of Barack Obama's inaugural address or a digital book on the history of Williams College?  All of this and much, much more is available in an incredible resource of digital information, the Internet Archive (IA). 

As of the end of September 2009, the Internet Archive includes over

206,000 moving images
406 audio recordings
1.6 million books
150 billion (!) web pages

All of the material in IA is in the public domain and can be freely used, although attribution is always a good idea. 

The mission of Internet Archive is "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 the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive receives data donations from Alexa and others. In late 1999, the organization started to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages, and is working to provide specialized services related to training, education, adaptive reading or information access needs of blind and other persons with disabilities. 

As a member of the Boston Library Consortium, Williams College is a contributor, though a minor one, to Internet Archive.  We are currently working with IA to make scanned copies of the Williams Record available for searching and viewing.  This has proven to be a complex task but progress is being made.  Here is a sneak preview of some issues of the Williams Record.
 
So if you need recordings, images, historic web pages, or e-books, remember that the Internet Archive is a good and growing resource.