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Internet Archive: Overview

Help searching in the Internet Archive

Internet Archive

logoOver 3 million free e-books and texts including many important historical and academic texts, all in a wide variety of download formats.

e-Book & Text Archive: over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts, including a collection of 2.3 million modern e-books that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.

In addition to books and texts, the Internet Archive provides users access to historical movies, television news, radio transcripts, audio collections, software, and images.

 

How to Use the Internet Archive

For more information on using Internet Archive, please view the video below. You can fast forward to the following timestamps for particular topics.

  • 00:00 WayBack Machine
  • 05:14 Books
  • 10:35 Movies
  • 13:10 Television News Archive
  • 15:05 Radio Transcripts 
  • 16:25 Audio Collections
  • 18:12 Software
  • 19:59 Images

Using Internet Archive E-Books

The Internet Archive is available to CDU students, faculty and staff, as well as members of the public.

  1. To borrow items, you will need to create an account. You do not need to use your CDU email.
  2. Search for your book title.
  3. Click on Borrow. You will be taken to the preview page.
  4. Click on Borrow this book. The default borrowing time is 1 hour, but you can sometimes change that to 14 days.
  5. You will be able to read the e-book in the viewer, or you can download the e-book and read it using Adobe Digital Editions.
  6. eBooks will be auto-returned or you can return your e-book early by clicking on Return It.

Guidelines for Using Internet Archive

  1. You can check out up to 10 e-books at one time.
  2. If an e-book cannot be borrowed, it will say Waitlist or Borrow Unavailable. If you join the Waitlist, you will be emailed when the book is ready. If it says Borrow Unavailable, try returning an e-book if you have 10 already checked out.
  3. In order to download e-books, you must use Adobe Digital Editions.