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Historical archives and preservation

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Find a Grave findagrave.com

Cemetery records database. Millions of burial records with photos.

FamilySearch familysearch.org

Free genealogy research. Billions of records from LDS archives.

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Omniglot omniglot.com

Encyclopedia of writing systems and languages. Scripts, alphabets, and constructed languages.

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RailPictures.net railpictures.net

Railroad photography database. Quality photos sorted by railroad and location.

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Archive of the legendary zine review magazine. Thousands of zine reviews from the 80s-90s.

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Zine Libraries zinelibraries.info

Directory of zine libraries worldwide. Physical collections preserving DIY publishing.

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Wild Sanctuary wildsanctuary.com

Bernie Krause's bioacoustics archive. Natural soundscapes and environmental audio.

Soundsnap soundsnap.com

Sound effects and field recording library. Professional quality audio.

Global sound map. Field recordings pinned to locations worldwide.

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45cat 45cat.com

7-inch single database. Catalog and track 45 RPM releases.

Unused and cut video game content. Debug modes, regional differences, and hidden secrets.

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SMS Power smspower.org

Sega Master System and Game Gear preservation. Scans, translations, and homebrew.

Romhacking.net romhacking.net

ROM hacking community. Translations, hacks, and utilities for retro games.

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IF Archive ifarchive.org

Repository of interactive fiction. Games, interpreters, and development tools.

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IFDB ifdb.org

Interactive Fiction Database. Reviews and downloads for text adventures and parser games.

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TASVideos tasvideos.org

Tool-assisted speedrun archive. Frame-perfect runs pushing games to theoretical limits.

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Infiltration infiltration.org

Classic urbex zine archive. Ninjalicious' writings on exploring hidden infrastructure.

Xeno-canto xeno-canto.org

Worldwide bird sound archive. Community-contributed recordings of over 10,000 species.

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scene.org Demo Archive files.scene.org

Direct access to the scene.org demo file archive. Browse by year, party, or platform.

CSDb csdb.dk

Commodore 64 Scene Database. Complete archive of C64 demos, cracks, and releases.

Archive of Amiga demoscene music. Tracker modules, musician profiles, and music disk collections.

The Mod Archive modarchive.org

Massive collection of tracker music modules. MOD, XM, S3M, IT files from the demoscene and beyond.

scene.org scene.org

The demoscene's primary file archive. Decades of demos, intros, music, and graphics freely downloadable.

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Anna's Archive annas-archive.org

The world's largest open library. Search engine for shadow libraries, providing access to books, papers, and comics.

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textfiles.com textfiles.com

Jason Scott's archive of BBS-era text files. Thousands of documents from the pre-web internet preserved for posterity.

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16colors 16colo.rs

Archive of ANSI and ASCII art from the BBS scene. Thousands of artpacks preserved from the 80s and 90s.

Defacto2 defacto2.net

Archive of the PC cracking and warez scene. NFO files, cracktros, and digital artifacts from underground computing.

CourtListener courtlistener.com

Free legal research from Free Law Project. Search millions of court opinions and oral arguments.

Curated classic and contemporary cinema. The gold standard for film preservation and curation.

archive.today archive.today

Webpage archiving service. Save snapshots of pages before they change or disappear.

3D scan of the interior of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Explore ancient architecture from your browser.

Oldskool.org oldskool.org

Jim Leonard's retro computing resource. PC demos, vintage hardware documentation, and digital preservation.

Europeana europeana.eu

Digital heritage from European museums, libraries, and archives. Millions of cultural artifacts online.

Google Arts & Culture artsandculture.google.com

Explore art and history from institutions worldwide. Virtual museum tours and high-resolution artwork.

PubMed Central ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Free archive of biomedical research. Millions of full-text articles.

bioRxiv biorxiv.org

Preprint server for biology. New research before peer review.

arXiv arxiv.org

Preprint server for physics, math, and CS. Where new research appears first.

Free access to books and papers. Shadow library for research and textbooks.

Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org

The original free ebook library. Over 70,000 public domain books, started in 1971.

LibriVox librivox.org

Free public domain audiobooks read by volunteers. Thousands of classic books in audio format.

Encyclopedic collection of religious, mythological, and folkloric texts. World's religions and esoterica.

Free access to thousands of academic articles and books. Scholarly research without paywalls.

Rhizome ArtBase rhizome.org

Archive of digital art from 1999 to present. Net art, software art, and born-digital works preserved.

Public Domain Review publicdomainreview.org

Curated essays on public domain works. Rediscovering forgotten treasures.

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Old Maps Online oldmapsonline.org

Portal to historical maps from libraries around the world. See how places looked centuries ago.

Computer History Museum computerhistory.org

Exploring the history of computing. Online exhibits, timelines, and oral histories from tech pioneers.

Run Windows 3.1 in your browser. Complete with Program Manager, File Manager, and classic apps.

Wayback Machine archive.org

Browse 800+ billion web pages saved over time. See how any website looked years ago.

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RetroGames retrogames.cz

Retro gaming database. Information on classic games and consoles.

Cameron's World cameronsworld.net

Web collage of text and images excavated from GeoCities. A memorial to the early web's creative chaos.

Internet Archive archive.org

Digital library offering free access to books, movies, software, and the Wayback Machine for web history.

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Standard Ebooks standardebooks.org

Free, carefully formatted ebooks of public domain literature. Beautiful typography, meticulous proofreading.