The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission to give all knowledge a universal home. It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, which may include websites, software applications, games, music, movies, and moving images. This digital library is home to millions of books, including many rare titles. The Internet Archives also offers millions of free ebooks. While these resources have limited availability, they are well worth the time to explore.
The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle, a software engineer who formerly worked at the for-profit web crawling company Alexa Internet. He started saving the World Wide Web in October 1996 and had already captured the first pages a month later. The Internetarchive began making the archived content available to the public in 2001. This service is similar to Netlabel and is open to the public.
As of March 2009, The Internet Archive has upgraded its storage and processing infrastructure. It is now based on 60 Sun Fire X4500 (Thumper) Open Storage Systems, which run Solaris 10 OS and Solaris ZFS file system. The new servers doubled the storage capacity of the Internet Archive and use 50% less power than older machines. To ensure that the servers are running at peak efficiency, Sun engineers monitor power usage and dispatch repair technicians. The IA Engineers are responsible for managing archival data, repository software, and access services for researchers.
