Internet Sacred Text Archive: Difference between revisions

The '''Internet Sacred Text Archive''' ('''ISTA''') is a [[Santa Cruz, California]]–based [[website]] dedicated to the preservation of electronic [[public domain]] texts, specifically those with significant cultural value. Works which fall into this category range from [[religious text]]s such as the [[Bible]], the [[Qur'an]], the [[Avestas]], the [[I Ching]], or the [[Vedas]], to the [[classics|classical literature]] of [[Virgil]], [[Plato]], or [[Sophocles]], and on to the more contemporary works of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], or the [[Brothers Grimm]].

In addition, ISTA compiles texts of [[Native American religion]], [[Native American mythology|mythology]] and [[Folklore of the United States#Native American folklore|folklore]], and lists historical texts and [[Ethnography|ethnographic]] accounts by culture group.<ref>{{cite web |title=Guide to Research in Native American Religions |url=http://www.library.illinois.edu/sshel/anthropology/nativeamer/nativeamerreligion.html |publisher=University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |access-date=15 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130516114534/http://www.library.illinois.edu/sshel/anthropology/nativeamer/nativeamerreligion.html |archive-date=16 May 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref> These texts were written from oral tradition by respected "ethnographers who were known for their careful and respectful approach to the people they studied."<ref>{{cite web |last=Hare |first=John |title=Native American Religions |url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/index.htm |publisher=ISTA |access-date=15 November 2012}}</ref>

==History==

The website was first opened to the public on March 9, 1999 by John Bruno Hare (July 8, 1955 – April 27, 2010), in [[Santa Cruz, California|Santa Cruz]], [[California]], [[United States|USA]].<ref name="ISTA_about">{{cite web|title=About Sacred-Texts|url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/about.htm|first=John|last=Hare|access-date=2006-11-07}}</ref> Hare started building the website from his home  in the late 1990s, as "an intellectual challenge". At the time, he was working as a software engineer with a [[dot-com company]], and started by scanning over 1,000 public domain books on religion, folklore and mythology <ref>{{cite news |title=Sacred Pages |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/technology/circuits/25diar.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=November 25, 2004 }}</ref> Its texts are organized into 77 different categories. The maintenance costs for the website—which {{As of|2006|lc=on}} received anywhere from five hundred thousand to two million visits a day—are funded by sales of the website on [[DVD]], [[CD-ROM]], or [[USB flash drive]] for monetary donations.<ref name="ISTA_about" />

* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/ The Internet Sacred Text Archive] (archived versions: [https://web.archive.org/web/20141016053353/http://www.sacred-texts.com/], [https://web.archive.org/web/20130723043012/http://worldtracker.org/media/library/Sacred%20Archive/])