What follows is the third of three articles addressing available research resources written by Mark Vargas, SAH Board member and Director of Grants and Research at America’s Packard Museum.
Many aficionados of automotive history, like the members of SAH, look for sources of information on their topic. Often the search begins and ends on Google, or by contacting one or more auto museums or clubs. Yet there are far more effective ways of searching that can lead to spectacular results. Previous articles provided details on WorldCat, HathiTrust, and this time we focus on the Internet Archive.
The Internet Archive is breathtaking in scope, diversity, and content. The mission of the Internet Archive is “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” While noble, the pursuit of that mission has landed the Internet Archive in several serious legal cases. The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, which began in 1996 to build a database of websites, now known as the Wayback Machine. It has continued growing at a remarkable rate through partnerships with libraries and other sources and today contains 1 trillion web pages, 56 million books and texts, 13 million audio recordings, 15 million videos, 5.3 million images, and 1.3 million software programs. It is currently scanning 3,700 books per day.
The Internet Archive has faced copyright challenges to its approach and content, and it settled two major suits over access to books and music. In the last few years, it has tightened access by requiring users to have an account and borrow items for limited amounts of time. As a result of the suits, any items in the public domain are fully readable and downloadable, but there are strict limitations on copyrighted materials. The bibliographic records on many items note them as being in the public domain but are still under copyright and are a lawsuit waiting to happen. For example, publishers sued the Internet Archive for over $700 million for uploading 3 million recordings on 78 rpm records. The parties settled out of court. Briefly, works are freely available in the Internet Archive if published in the U.S. more than 95 years ago or published elsewhere in the world more than 125 years ago. Items still in copyright are viewable through a Preview function but require you to have an account and borrow the item. Books are available for renewable 1-hour loans. Some items will be available for download; some will not be. In other words, to make best use of the Internet Archive sign up with a personal account.
So, what does the Internet Archive do for you, the searcher? You do not need a membership or account to use the Internet Archive; it is not a subscription service and does not license copyrighted content for lending purposes. The Internet Archive home search page is straightforward and simple to use. It defaults to searching metadata, but you have many options for searching by format of materials, by specific collection, or through full text. The resulting records will contain the name of the creator, a description, type of materials, dates, and when available, links to any online content. One interesting collection is the Manual Library which contains over 3 million manuals on every product you can think of. I sure wish I still had my 1980s-era Commodore 64 computer now that I found the manuals for it. Of particular interest is the Automotive Manual collection, which contains over 12,000 items. You can search through all the manuals at once, or by brand. I found various manuals for my 2005 Chrysler Crossfire but nothing for my 1995 Ford Mustang GT. The content in the Automobile Manual collection is very unpredictable in scope and depth, but you might find exactly what you need.
There are so many hidden gems in the Internet Archive that it is difficult to comprehend what is available. The audio, image, and visual collections are vast and a real treat. The content is varying, but gems are everywhere. Next time you are stuck in a traffic jam, remember Give Yourself the Green Light, a 1954 GM production promoting the interstate highway system (don’t watch while driving, of course). A 1956 Packard film, The Safe Road Ahead, lasts 22 minutes and is about torsion bar suspension and automatic transmissions. Where was this kind of thing shown and who would sit through it? The credits say, “with the compliments of your Packard dealer.” I even found several old computer games on which I squandered generous portions of my early adulthood. Now I can squander even more hours of my senior years on them.
The strength and weakness of the Internet Archive is the questionable copyright status, metadata, and indexing, and because anyone can upload into the system, there is a wide range of quality and thoroughness. For example, although the complete Automobile Quarterly is available, trying to find a specific issue of the magazine is frustrating and requires lots of time to hunt. The subject indexing is mostly of no value. AQ used to be fully readable, but because of the copyright suits, it now is in preview mode and requires a user account to read for one hour at a time. Beginning in 2017, OCLC (the operators of WorldCat) and the Internet Archive have collaborated to enhance digital resource metadata, discovery, and access. You cannot create automatic APA and MLA citations to the materials.
As with WorldCat and HathiTrust, there are challenges to using the Internet Archive. First, the sheer volume of information can be formidable, and I find using the advanced search features immensely helpful, if not essential. Using the AND OR NOT features in advanced searching is handy. For example, I have long been interested in early automotive safety measures. A simple search on “automobile accidents” resulted in over 750 items and using the advanced search features quickly reduces the number of hits. Remember those horror films shown to teens about driver safety? Plenty of them are available, including Crash and Live. For a more uplifting perspective, there is Grumpy Old Drivers (sounds like me), A Book of Ford Jokes, and Women Can’t Merge, Men Won’t Yield. I chuckled listening to Uncle Josh Buys an Automobile from 1915, in which Nancy convinces Josh to sell “four heavy cattle, corn, twenty hulks, ten tons of hay, and put a mortgage on the farm” to buy a mail-order car. Speaking of safety, the engine crank smashed Uncle Josh in the leg, and he noted that after his first drive “all I have got to show for that joyride is a broken leg, some rubber tires, six lawsuits, and a mortgage on the farm.” Uncle Josh should have watched Crash and Live.
The second challenge, like with WorldCat and HathiTrust, is the lack of automobile museum libraries that participate. Internet Archive users can upload scanned materials, and there is a scanning service available through the Internet Archive. For me, the lack of good metadata and indexing, and copyright issues, are the greatest faults with the Internet Archive, but at least there are plenty of enjoyable serendipitous finds.
The Internet Archive, like WorldCat and HathiTrust, is a remarkable search tool that all members of SAH can use. It is comprehensive, free, and a great tool for finding remarkably rich universe of information. As with WorldCat and HathiTrust, spending a little time on the Internet Archive is worth your while, and research nirvana. Happy motoring and searching! (mv)