1. Why did Internet Archive pursue becoming a federal depository library?
   • This is the culmination of years of work building Democracy’s Library, a free, open, online collection of government research and publications from around the world. As Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive, explained to KQED:
     
     “By being part of the program itself, it just gets us closer to the source of where the materials are coming from, so that it’s more reliably delivered to the Internet Archive, to then be made available to the patrons of the Internet Archive or partner libraries.”
     
2. What does the FDLP designation mean for Internet Archive in practical terms?
   • It means that Internet Archive will get more documents from the Government Publishing Office and from other FDLP partner libraries that we will preserve, digitize (if in physical form), and make available through archive.org. Internet Archive currently receives donations of government documents from libraries, but there are some materials that can only be donated to other FDLP libraries. By being part of the program, Internet Archive can now work with those libraries, and GPO directly, to preserve, digitize, and provide access to even more public information.
     
3. How are FDLP designations made?
   • Libraries can become part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) in two main ways. First, some libraries are designated by law—for example, land grant universities automatically qualify. Second, members of Congress can designate libraries in their district or state to join the FDLP, as long as there’s a vacancy and the library can show it’s capable of serving the public’s need for access to government information. The Internet Archive was designated as a federal depository library on July 24, 2025, by Senator Alex Padilla of California.
     
4. Does this mean the government owns the Wayback Machine?
   • No. Becoming a Federal Depository Library does not give the government any ownership of or control over the Wayback Machine or the Internet Archive’s collections. The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a voluntary partnership that helps libraries provide free public access to government publications. The Internet Archive remains an independent, nonprofit research library, and continues to curate and operate its collections—including the Wayback Machine—on its own terms.
     
5. What does this designation mean for Internet Archive?
   • Becoming a member of the Federal Depository Library Program furthers Internet Archive’s mission to provide “Universal access to all knowledge.” It is the culmination of years of existing collaborations and partnerships with FDLP libraries. With our new designation as a federal depository library, we’re officially part of the national network that provides the public with free access to government publications. That means we can now acquire, preserve, and share even more official government documents—further expanding our collections and strengthening public access to government information.

• More than 500,000 books have been taken out of lending as a result of Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library, including more than 1,300 banned and challenged books.

Books that are shown as “Borrow Unavailable” mean they cannot be borrowed by our patrons, including books you may have previously read or consulted. 

In 2020, our library was sued by four of the world’s largest publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley—for lending books via the library practice known as controlled digital lending. That lawsuit, Hachette v. Internet Archive, is currently on appeal after the lower court (the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York) heard the case and ruled in favor of the publishers. In this decision against our library, Judge Koeltl issued an injunction that limits what we can do with our digitized books—namely, we can no longer lend those books to our patrons. The injunction does not affect our accessibility program—the removed books are still available to patrons with print disabilities.

Additionally, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization behind the lawsuit, worked with some of its member publishers (listed below) that were not named in the lawsuit to demand that we remove their books from our library.

As a result, more than 500,000 books in our collection are not currently available for borrowing, including more than 1,300 banned and challenged books. We understand that this is a devastating loss for our patrons. Fortunately, other countries and international library organizations are moving to support controlled digital lending. For inquiries, please contact patron services at info@archive.org.

Plaintiff Publishers

• Hachette Book Group
• HarperCollins
• Penguin Random House
• Wiley

Other Publishers Coordinated by the Association of American Publishers (AAP)

• American Chemical Society
• American Reading Company
• BiggerPockets Publishing
• Bloomsbury
• Bookpress Publishing
• Cambridge University Press
• Chronicle Books
• De Gruyter
• Elsevier
• Fordham University Press
• Getty Publications
• Hansen Publishing Group
• Harvard University Press
• Holiday House-Peachtree-Pixel+Ink
• Imbrifex Books
• Lynne Rienner Publishers
• Macmillan
• MedMaster
• Melville House Publishing
• Moody Publishers
• Pearson
• Princeton University Press
• Sage Publications
• Scholastic
• Simon & Schuster
• Springer
• Taylor & Francis
• Teacher Created Materials
• The American University in Cairo Press
• University of California Press
• University of Chicago Press
• University of Massachusetts Press
• University of Minnesota Press
• University of Texas Press
• University of Wisconsin Press
• University Press of Colorado
• Valancourt Books
• W. W. Norton & Company
• Wesleyan University Press
• Wolters Kluwer
• Yale University Press

To have them removed, please email info@archive.org from the email address used for the account.

Here is a template for the email:

NOTE: If you are starting with a single PDF file (as opposed to images of book pages), the upload process is more straightforward.  In this case, you may wish to review the information below starting from step 4, but using a MARC record is optional. You can simply upload the PDF and hand-enter the metadata as you would with any other type of media.

Basic steps to upload images for a book:

1. Scan the book
2. Create a .zip or .tar file of images with the pages in sequential order
3. Name the .zip/.tar file correctly (e.g. identifier_images.zip)
4. (Optional) Prepare a correctly named MARC metadata record (e.g. identifier_marc.xml)
5. Upload the files to archive.org
6. Verify the metadata is correct and the book formats were derived properly

Details for Each Step

1. Scan the book

There are many ways to create images of book pages. Librarians may have special equipment for scanning books, while home users may use a combination scanner/printer to capture images. These are the key things to remember when creating page images:

• Scan all pages, including the cover and back page.
• Scan at the highest possible quality level (we recommend 300 dpi minimum).
• Image files can end with .jp2, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, .gif, .bmp or .png. Any combination of these can be used.
• Check the quality of the images before uploading:
  • No pages are skipped.
  • All images are crisp.
• If possible, crop your scanned images to show just the page.
• If possible, make sure the lines of text in the images are exactly horizontal (or vertical for some languages).

2. Create a .zip or .tar file of the images in sequential order

• Make sure the file names for the page images are in sequential order. The cover should come first, then all the pages of the book in order, and ending with the back cover.
• Put the files in a folder (they may be in one already).
• Turn the folder into a .zip or .tar file. There are many methods for doing this, but these are the most common:
  • On a Mac, control-click on the folder and choose Compress from the drop-down menu. (more)
  • In Windows, right-click on the folder and choose Send To then Compress. (more)

3. Name the .zip/.tar file correctly (e.g. identifier_images.zip)
It is critical to name your files correctly for this process to work smoothly. On archive.org your uploaded book will have a unique identifier that is part of the URL.

Example: https://archive.org/details/leatherwork00wils

In this example, leatherwork00wils is the unique identifier for the book. You may choose your own unique identifier (as long as it is not already in use).

You will use this identifier to name your .zip/.tar file (and any MARC metadata file you choose to upload). Your file name should begin with your unique identifier and end in _images.zip or _images.tar

Example: leatherwork00wils_images.zip

4. (Optional) Prepare a correctly named MARC metadata record (e.g. identifier_marc.xml)

A MARC record is a MAchine Readable Cataloging record. It contains metadata like title, author, description, subjects, etc. (learn more). It is the digital equivalent of a catalog card.

You are not required to upload a MARC record with your book. You can type in all of the appropriate metadata by hand in the next step.

Advantages of uploading a MARC record:

• Less typing! We will pull the metadata out of the MARC record for you.
• Libraries love them! Having a MARC record means libraries can more easily use or refer to the book you upload.

You can find MARC records online at the Library of Congress. Search their catalog for your book and if they have it you can download a MARCXML record or a MARC21 record.

If you have a MARCXML record, name your file with your identifier and the ending _marc.xml:

Example:  leatherwork00wils_marc.xml

If you have a MARC21 record, name your file with your identifier and the ending _meta.mrc:

Example: leatherwork00wils_meta.mrc

5. Upload the files to archive.org
You must have a free archive.org account to upload. Get one here.  Sign in to the site and click the upload icon in the navigation bar.

• Press the green Upload Files button.
• Drag and drop your .zip/.tar file (and optional MARC file) into the grey area on the upload page, or use the Choose files to upload button to find the files.
• Make sure the Page URL ends in the unique identifier that you chose for your files.

• Fill out the Title,Description, Subject, Creator and Date fields:
  • If you did NOT upload a MARC record please fill out all of these fields with as many details as possible. This is how people can find your book! More is better!
  • If you uploaded a MARC record, you can enter minimal metadata for the description and subject. After we process your book, we will automatically pull all of the metadata out of the MARC record to populate these fields.
• Select a collection from the drop-down menu (Community Texts, unless you have your own collection)
• Select a language. This step is critical to make sure we OCR your images correctly. OCR (optical character recognition) is the process of turning your images into text.
• Select a license if you know what it should be (or leave this blank).
• Click Submit

Depending on the speed of your internet connection, the size of your files, and how busy our website is, it may take several minutes (or longer!) to complete your upload and create a page for your book.

When the process is complete, you will be automatically redirected to your item page. 

6. Verify the metadata is correct and the book formats were derived properly
After your upload is complete, it will take anywhere from minutes to hours for us to process (derive) your images into all of our book formats.  

In the meantime, you will see this message on your item page:

When this process is complete, you can simply refresh the page and you will see a preview of your book at the top of the page and all of the derived file formats in the download options section on the right.

If you uploaded a MARC record, you will also see the full metadata that was pulled from the record and put into the page.

Please take a moment to verify all of your metadata.

If you entered temporary placeholder text during the upload process, you should remove it now by clicking the Edit link near the title.

At this point, you should have a beautiful ebook! You can download various formats, full screen the bookreader, share the book on social media, or embed it on another website.

Thanks for adding a book to the library!

There are access restricted items such as books in the lending program and some other collections, as well as some file formats.

To download, go to the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS section on the right side of a page:

1. To download single files, click the SHOW ALL link.

Then right-click or control-click on the link to the file you wish to download.

2. To download all the files on the page that have the same format, click one of the links in the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS menu and select download all files. (Note: if there are many files the zip to download feature may fail.)

 3. You can also download all the originals or all the files available to download by clicking on one of the links at the bottom of the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS section.

If the book is already out on loan you will be invited to join a waiting list and you will be notified, via email, as soon as the book is available. When you get notified depends on where you are on the waiting list, and when the book is returned.

To find your place on the waitlist for a book on archive.org:

1. Log in and go to the book’s page on archive.org.

2. On the archive.org page, you will see a message above the book preview that indicates your position on the waitlist.

When it is your turn to borrow the book, you will receive an email notifying you.

You will have 48 hours to borrow or it will be passed to the next person on the list.

To find your position on the waiting list in openlibrary.org:

1. Log in and go to the book’s page on openlibrary.org. You can use the Openlibrary_edition link on the archive.org page.

2. On the openlibrary.org page, you will see a number above the Leave waiting list button that indicates your position.

When it is your turn to borrow the book, you will receive an email notifying you.

You will have 48 hours to borrow or it will be passed to the next person on the list.

Once you have a list of 50 or more related items, you can send a link for that list to info@archive.org and we will be happy to consider creating a formal collection.

Until you have a collection, your items will remain in the public Community collections.

To create a collection we will need the following:

1. The email address(es) of the account(s) that uploaded the content.

2. A list of the item links or the URL of a search query which will identify them.

3. The name of the collection and a brief description (to be used on your collection page) of your organization and/or the material housed in the collection.

4. A suggested identifier (the tail of the URL) for the collection page (please use meaningful words and it should be 5-80 characters preferably lowercase and/or numbers only. No special characters or spaces).

5. At least one Subject Tag that describes the collection.

6. (optional) The logo you would like to display on the collection page. Best if it is at least 500p x 500p or at least 500px wide or high.

7. The archive.org account email address(es) that you would like to have administrative privileges for this collection. (These addresses will be able to upload directly to the collection as well as edit information about the collection).

Once your collection is created, any existing items will be moved to it and you will have admin privileges to upload to it.

We will move the items for one of the following reasons:

1. They are not in the correct public Community collection based on media type (text, movies, audio, software).
2. You already have a collection where you have admin privileges and the items should be allocated to this collection but they have not.
3. You believe they belong in another category collection but you don’t have admin privileges and you can motivate why they would be better cataloged into the other category (e.g. Classic TV).

If your scenario matches one of the above three reasons, you can send an email to info@archive.org from the email address used for your account, using the template below.

Please remember, we receive so many requests for collections that it is our policy to only create a collection for users who have a minimum of 50 items (an item is a page on archive.org) created on archive.org that are of the same media type.

1.  Removed due to malware

During upload, files are checked for malware. If it is detected, the item will be removed from the site. You would need to start over and upload files that do not contain malware.

2. Removed due to a violation of the terms of use

Items that violate the Terms of Use will be removed from the site. Please refer to the Terms at the following link Terms of Use.

3. Removed in error

Occasionally there are admin errors or glitches in the system. If you believe an item was removed in error please email us at info@archive.org

Here is a template for the email:

4. Servers are undergoing maintenance

During server maintenance, it is possible that items may temporarily be offline. Feel free to contact us at info@archive.org to check on the status of an item.

Here is a template for the email:

5. Removed due to DMCA takedown

We will honor legitimate Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests.

If you would like to read more about the act, you can do so here DMCA.

You can upload any time you wish once you have created an account at https://archive.org/account/login.createaccount.php.

To upload:

1. Create an account

2. You should receive an email to verify your account (check your spam or junk folders if it does not appear in your inbox within a few minutes)

3. Log in to your account

4. Click the Upload button in the upper right next to the Search bar.

5. You will be directed to a screen where you can select how you would like to upload your files. The green Upload Files is the recommended uploader except for Live Music Archive uploads.

6. You will be asked to either Drag & Drop files from your computer onto the gray box or to select the Choose files to upload button. Both ways will enable you to upload your files.

7. Complete the metadata form. Click on the cells to add the title, URL, description, subject tags. etc. This is so that we can archive it and so that others can find your files.

8. Select the appropriate collection for the type of content files you are uploading

9. Add as much additional metadata as possible such as creator, date the content was created, language, etc.

10. Click Upload and Create Your Item when you are done.

11. You will see a status bar which will indicate that your page is being created. Please note, this does take some time depending on the activity of the site.

12. You will be automatically redirected to the newly created item when it has completed running its tasks.

13. You can further edit the item’s metadata or files by clicking the Edit item link on the item page.

Bulk uploading

If you have several files and need to create many items, please contact us at info@archive.org for additional information about how to do bulk or batch uploading using our command-line tool in the terminal.

It can be found at https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive