# I'd like to save the contents of a large website. Recommendations?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 27, 2005, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845 "2005-01-27T00:27:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![monst1lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7c8e57/32.png) [@monst1lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monst1lamp)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845/1 "2005-01-27T00:27:19Z")

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[www.bartleby.com](http://www.bartleby.com)

as im sure most of you know, this is a website that features:  
Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th edition  
The Harvard Classics  
The World Factbook  
and much more, all for free.

I’d like to save this information to my harddrive in case one day, its not free anymore,

or,

for when i travel and am without internet i have some reading material to keep me occupied.

Does anyone know a fast way to save these books beside going though and manually copying and pasting all of it into text docs?  
Maybe by saving directories of the website, instead of individual pages?  
Any software?

Thanks…

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**Author:** ![Cugel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cugel/32/1199_2.png) [@Cugel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cugel)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845/2 "2005-01-27T00:35:46Z")

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There’s this [http://www.httrack.com/](http://www.httrack.com/)  
Not sure how smart it is when it comes to the differing methods of linking pages within a site, though.

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**Author:** ![Alvis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alvis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alvis)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845/3 "2005-01-27T00:38:35Z")

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From the TOS “The Service and its Contents are protected by copyright pursuant to U.S. and international copyright laws. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way **exploit** , any of the Content or the Service (including software) in whole or in part”

I’d check with them first that your intended archiving isn’t seen as exploiting the service.

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**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845/4 "2005-01-27T00:38:45Z")

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The CIA World Factobook is available as an easy, packaged download to be run offline, available at the CIA website. It’s fairly obvious how to get to it.

Some of the Harvard Classics are available via Project Gutenberg as well, and you can download those for free too in easy to read form.

The Sixth Edition Columbia Encyclopedia, however, appears to be copyrighted, so it’s of questionable legality to download the whole thing for offline use.

For archiving a site legally, programs like Webzip exist for just such a reason.

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**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-like-to-save-the-contents-of-a-large-website-recommendations/286845/5 "2005-01-27T00:58:15Z")

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[http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html](http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html) is an implementation of the wget program for Windows machines. If you don’t run Windows, you should already have wget on your machine (it’s a standard Unix tool and therefore comes with MacOS X, Linux, and the BSDs).

It can be extremely rude to slurp large amounts of data off someone’s servers, though. If you want to mirror [Bartleby.com](http://Bartleby.com), ask them and they might give you an easier alternative.