Browsing the Archive

November 23, 2016

BUILD

HELP BUILD THE 2016 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WEB ARCHIVE

The presidential election of 2016 has been nothing short of historic—please help make sure that history is indelible. In the future—even today—scholars, journalists and the public will want to examine the digital public record put forth in this election cycle. But as we've seen, Web pages disappear. That's why the Internet Archive is working to ensure the public can access the facts forever. Now we need your help. Add to our Presidential Election Web Archive by filling out this simple form with Web pages and items that you think need to be preserved. Our goal is to give every researcher access to the important data from this presidential contest.

TELEVISION

ON THE RECORD—WHAT DID POLITICIANS ACTUALLY SAY?

Since the presidential campaigns began, our Television Archive has preserved thousands of hours of political speech. Now using our advanced TV search, quote and sharing functions, together with a tool called "Popcorn," you can make your own political video mash-ups. And what's more, others can take your work and add to it, remix it or add comments.

To show what we mean, here's a short video of the president-elect, on the record, about the fourth estate.

SEARCHING THROUGH EVERYTHING

The Internet Archive has over twenty million items, so how do you find the one you're looking for? Here's the short answer: much easier than before, thanks to major improvements in our search technology. Let's say you're looking for the video game "Wizard of Oz". Now, you can search specifically for that type of item, and not see any other media among your search results. Topics and subjects are also new search criteria that allow visitors to more easily navigate the Archive's collections.

In addition, users may now search for specific words and phrases across over nine million documents in the Archive's collection of texts. It now takes only a second to find the 199 documents in which the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" appears.

PLAY

THE INTERNET ARCADE BECOMES AN ARCHIVE REALITY

The Internet Archive now has two arcades: The online Internet Arcade, which allows the playing of hundreds of vintage arcade machines in your browser, and now an actual "Internet Arcade" machine in our lobby. A generous gift from X-Arcade, who make arcade cases and control panels, it is a full-size machine that plays arcade and console games while looking like it just got wheeled out of a 1980s game palace. And no quarters needed! The unique artwork for our lobby machine was made by Mar Williams of sudux.com, who created a custom marquee, side art and control panel design which you can download from the Archive for your own use. Try it out the next time you stop by.

PRESERVE

LIVING NEW DEAL PROJECT

Every politician promises a new deal if elected, but Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered. The New Deal was an ambitious response to an economic and societal crisis, the Great Depression. These government films are propaganda, not objective documentaries, but they do depict the unemployment and desperate poverty gripping the United States in the 1930s, as well as depictions of people working on a variety of federally sponsored programs—everything from building bridges to painting murals.

BOOKS

JAPANESE FAIRY TALES

The Internet Archive has many classics of Western literature in its collection, including The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. But what about the legends of an ancient culture across the Pacific? These 22 tales, with lovely, whimsical illustrations by Kakuzo Fujiyama, bring to life Japanese legends from the sagacious monkey to Ogre of Rashomon. Like 2.5 million other public domain books in the Internet Archive, you may read it online or download it to add to your personal library.