Fun at the Internet Archive

For a change of pace, explore the Internet Archive, an online library of movies, music, texts, and more - all available for free to the public, with materials either in the public domain or archived with the permission of their creators. Here's just a small sample of what's available - we keep finding more as we browse. Most of the contents can be viewed/read/listened to online or downloaded to your hard drive. Everything's free, no registration or special software required.

The Wayback Machine archives versions of web pages that are no longer available.

The Moving Images section includes old newsreels and educational films, and newer footage uploaded by its makers, from experimental films to amateur camcorder footage of the 2004 tsunami's devastation in action.

The text collection includes classic and out-of-copyright publications and historical documents, scanned page-by-page, including illustrations. Check out illustrated French fairy tales or some eighteenth-century medical advice.

I've spent the most time at the Live Music Archive, with almost 40,000 concert recordings by over 2400 bands, in mp3 and other digital formats. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of jam bands like the Grateful Dead, but there are also newer acts like the Decemberists; it's also a great opportunity to check out new and smaller bands that you might not have heard before.

Martha's concert recs:
Harry and the Potters Live at Haskett Library, "wizard rock" inspired by the books.

Eddie from Ohio, 1998-07-21, catchy folk.

Josh Ritter, Live at Double Door on 2006-04-21, an amazing singer-songwriter from Idaho.

Hem, Live at Mr. Smalls Funhouse on 2006-02-23, lovely, sweet country-rock for a rainy day.

Recent arrivals

Check out a few recent additions at the Gleason Library!

Fiction:
The Yiddish policemen's union, by Michael Chabon

Shopaholic & baby, by Sophie Kinsella

The naming of the dead, by Ian Rankin

Nonfiction:
Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Call number B Hirsi Ali

My so-called punk : Green Day, Fall Out Boy, the Distillers, Yellowcard : how neo-punk stage-dived into the mainstream, by Matt Diehl
Call number 781.66 Die

The Pushcart book of poetry : the best poems from three decades of the Pushcart Prize
811.008 Pus

DVDs:
The Queen

Little Children

Dreamgirls

Edward Hopper

The Edward Hopper exhibit opens Sunday at the MFA. Read reviews in the Boston Globe here or the New York Times here (may require login; can also be accessed through our Newsbank database with your library card number). Thumb through a scrapbook of photos, sketches and memorabilia from Hopper's life at the Smithsonian American Art Museum web site here. Listen to an NPR report on Nighthawks and its painter here. And at the Gleason Library, check out these books:

Edward Hopper, the complete prints, compiled by Gail Levin
Call number 769 Hopper

Edward Hopper's New England, by Carl Little
Call number 759.13 Hopper(L)