Time off over the holidays? Need a little break while visiting family? Sourcing recommendations for movie night? The Internet Archive has you covered. We’ve gathered some of our staff’s favorite items (holiday-themed and otherwise) in our collections to share with you—enjoy this selection of publicly available movies, books, games, and more!
Movies
“We have a number of movies in the public domain within our collections, many of which we play in our HQ during Public Domain movie nights. Now, you can bring the public domain movie nights to your own home
The Haunted House (1921): A silent film starring Buster Keaton
Malice in the Palace (1949): A comedy short starring the Three Stooges
Charade (1963): A classic romance starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn”
-Internet Archive Admin Team
My favorite collection is the Biodiversity Heritage Library.”
-Joy Chesbrough, Director of Philanthropy
“I’m a big fan of Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts Collection, particularly this book on herbs from 15th century Italy. The illustrations are super well-preserved and mix realism and fantasy to depict herbs and their qualities.”
-Tanya Zeif, Patron Services
“Enjoy over 19,000 public domain audiobooks read by Librivox volunteers. The collection has novels (Jane Eyre, Peter Pan, Moby Dick, etc.) + short stories and poetry read in over forty different languages. Pretty neat. I recommend The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”
-Tom Mayer, Development Coordinator
“One of my favorites is The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women Who Motor or Who Want to Motor. It’s a guide to learning to drive from a woman who was a professional racecar driver in 1909. She briefly held the world land speed record (a blistering 79 miles per hour) and is credited with inventing the rearview mirror–she recommended that women bring their makeup compact along with them while driving so that they could hold up the mirror and see what was behind them without having to take their eyes off the road. A few years later, car manufacturers started including these mirrors in the vehicle by default.”
-Jenica Jessen, Marketing Manager
Software/Games
“One of my favorite items in the Archive is the Sierra On-Line Christmas Card from 1986. If you haven’t ever seen a DOS-based holiday card, we also have the 1990 and 1992 versions for even more animated computer card fun.”
-Chris Freeland, Director of Open Library
“I love the Malware Museum! It’s a collection of all these cool animations that would show up when a computer in the early aughts would have a virus. It’s a) So cool to look at, a vibe I think a lot of modern design tries to emulate, and b) so reminiscent of a specific time. Reminding me of some of my fave movies and shows from the 2000’s.”
-Amandari Karaca, Digital Engagement Specialist
Music
“I recently discovered Air in Resort. For skincare aficionados, it is a 1984 album commissioned by Shiseido to promote their new fragrance.”
-Andrea Mills, Executive Director, Internet Archive Canada.
“I’ve been loving these recordings of a Bay Area radio station from the 60s. KYA San Francisco was playing early rock radio in the Bay until it was sold in 1983″
– Jeff Klein, Senior Software Engineer (Archiving and Data Services)
Here’s to a happy and safe holiday season from all of us at the Internet Archive.
