Search Internet Archive Library for Books by Subject. The Internet Archive has millions of free published books, so you will likely find far more books here than on any other Internet site. The procedures for nonfiction and fiction books are much the same, except for a variation described in Step 5, below. Step 6 explains how to search for works by an Author.
- Nonfiction Search: In Internet Archive (https://archive.org), click on Texts at the top edge of the page. Mobile: In the Internet Archive Main Menu, click Texts; then All Texts.
- In the Search box, type subject:, followed by a broad subject term you’re seeking. Put a colon (:) after subject. Put your subject term inside parentheses (), with no space after subject: for example: subject:(engineering). Select “Search Metadata“, under the Search box. Click Search this collection or click “Enter“.
- Optional: In the search results, look in the left column for Subject to find a list of the subjects contained in the results. Mobile: Click Filters to find the Subject list. Click “More” at the bottom of the Subject list to open the full list. Select the best subjects; as many as you want. Click Apply Filters. Your search results appear! Mobile: Scroll down to see results.
- To further improve your Search — In the search results, (if in tile or compact list views) hover your mouse over any book closely related to your subject. A metadata entry will appear under the book containing a list of Topics. Clicking on a topic opens search results for that topic. Mobile: Hover doesn’t work this way on mobile. Click a book and look in the metadata below the book for its Topics.
- Search FICTION Books by Subject. Follow the same steps as above, but in Step 2, add AND fiction, after your subject term, like this: subject:(engineering) AND fiction. AND must be in caps.
- Search for Books by an AUTHOR. In the Search field, type creator: (with colon), followed with no space by the name of the author; last name first, in parentheses (). For example: creator:(doyle, arthur conan). Click Search this collection. Try variants of the author’s first name(s), including initials, for more results.
- Instead of the procedure above, you can use the Century Past Subject Directory to find your topics, where thousands of subject searches have already been done.
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