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Archive-It

Thousands of themed collections built by libraries and museums, each one somebody's deliberate decision about what to keep.

Opens in a new tab. We do not control this site and it may have changed since we catalogued it.

How to get the most from it

Archive-It sits in Web Archives under Retro, filed as coffee break.

  • Set aside five to fifteen minutes and give it your proper attention.
  • It works on a phone or a desktop, so open it on whatever is nearest.
  • It works with the sound off, so it is fine on a train or in a quiet office.
  • No account needed — you can start without signing up.
  • Go in expecting something brainy and useful.

About this category: Archives, dead websites brought back and search pointed at the past. What the web looked like before it settled down.

Good for

  • Filling a coffee break properly
  • Giving your brain a workout
  • Getting something practical done
  • A quiet break at your desk
  • Killing time on your phone
  • Trying it with zero commitment

Archive-It: quick answers

Is Archive-It free?

Yes. Archive-It is free to use and needs no account.

Do I need an account to use Archive-It?

No. You can use Archive-It without signing up for anything.

Does Archive-It work on a phone?

Yes. Archive-It works on phones as well as desktop browsers.

Is Archive-It safe for work?

Yes, we file it as safe for work. It also works muted.

How long does Archive-It take?

We file it as "Coffee break": Five to fifteen minutes of proper attention.

More in Web Archives

All 12 in Web Archives
  • Takes a permanent snapshot of a page on demand, including ones the Wayback Machine will not capture. Useful when a page is about to change.

  • The Portuguese web archive, notable for full-text search across its whole history rather than only address lookup.

  • Petabytes of crawled web pages released free for anyone to analyse. Most of the language models you have used started here.

    • 1 hr+
    • Desktop
  • Records a page as you browse it, capturing the parts a crawler cannot — logged-in views, video, anything behind a click.

    • 10 min
    • Desktop

Same mood: brainy

All brainy sites
  • A calm, ad-free space where artists and researchers gather links, images and notes into shared channels. Follow one thread and an hour disappears.

  • The preprint server where most physics, maths and computer science appears long before a journal touches it.

  • Draws boxes, arrows and flowcharts entirely out of monospace characters, for diagrams that live inside code comments.

  • Recorded terminal sessions replayed as selectable text, genuinely useful to learn from and indistinguishable from real work.

Keep exploring

Have a site of your own? Suggest it for Detour or browse the AltFTool backlinks hub.