Large Digital Library Collection

The Internet Archive has been building a library since 1996. Many know it as the home of the “wayback machine” a tool that lets you search for older versions of web pages, including those that may no longer exist. For example, if you search on http;//www.uvm.edu you can find samples of UVM’s home page going back to 1996.
More recently I revisited the site to look at their text collections. These have grown extensively. They now include text from American Libraries, Canadian Libraries, the Gutenberg Collection, the Biodiversity Library, and a Children’s Library, along with many others, some 383,875 texts and growing.
The texts themselves come in a variety of formats, all searchable. You can view them as PDFs, HTML, plain TXT, and even as flip books, i.e. versions that show you an image of the books pages. When you click it “turns” the page so you can proceed as you would in a paper-based book. The site also includes video and audio collections, as well as educational materials.
Check it out the text collections at:
http://www.archive.org/details/texts