What Long Keeping is
Long Keeping gathers the primary works of people who gave the most to human knowledge, as they wrote and published them: books, papers as they appeared in the journals, lecture texts, letters and patents, in the copies the archive holds. It begins with eight people, from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein, and 597 works.
It is a reading room, not a summary service. We do not retell, abridge or modernise. Where a work exists only in translation, the translation is named and labelled as such.
How originals are kept
Each file is stored exactly as it was downloaded, byte for byte. When a file is collected we take its sha256 fingerprint, a 64-character code that changes if even one byte of the file changes, and write it into a manifest beside the record of where the file came from, on what date, and under what terms.
Every copy of the collection is read again by hand once a year and each fingerprint compared with the manifest. That is the fixity check: a pass means every file is the same file we collected. The collection is kept in more than one place, so a damaged copy can be replaced from a good one. There is no automatic alert yet; a fault is found at the next check.
Last check passed 2 October 2026 · 903 of 903 originals match · manifest fc89317f6a39…
This catalogue is built from that manifest, covering 903 files and 535.1 MB. Sizes use 1 KB = 1,000 bytes.
How rights are labelled
Every work and every file carries one of three labels, shown with a shape as well as a colour. A work shows the label of its main file; each file shows its own.
- Public domain
- The author died before 1956 and the text is their own, in its original language, or a translation whose translator also died before 1956. A licence or a publication date in the record can also decide it. The deciding fact must be in the archive's records; the search for a translator or editor reads each record's edition and notes. 366 works.
- To check
- We have not yet established the deciding fact: an unnamed translator, an editor whose dates we lack, a death year that is not yet in the archive's records, or a whole journal issue with other authors in it. 93 works.
- Likely in copyright
- A translator, editor or other contributor died in 1956 or later, or the edition adds newer material. The author's own words may be free while this edition is not. 138 works.
These labels are a first pass, not legal advice and not a clearance. A file is served here only when it is labelled public domain on a recorded fact, none of its own images is awaiting the archive's likeness review (pictures in saved web pages are left out; see Pictures), its source's terms allow it and it is small enough for this site; every other file is held in the archive, with its reason. Each work summarises its source's terms, with the full wording in the record. The following do not stop a public-domain file being served:
- free licences and public-domain marks that allow redistribution, such as CC BY-SA, CC BY, CC0 and the Public Domain Mark (the file shows the licence for the parts it covers, and its attribution);
- a distributor's terms that allow copying and re-use, such as the Project Gutenberg License (shown as the file's distribution terms);
- a host's site-wide access terms, such as the Internet Archive's (the work credits the Internet Archive);
- JSTOR's Early Journal Content notice and Creative Commons non-commercial licences (CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA), which allow non-commercial redistribution. This library is free and non-commercial, and such works carry their source's attribution.
Any other licence or notice keeps a file held, including licences that forbid changes (ND) and licences the library cannot identify.
Pictures
Pictures in saved web pages are not shown yet. A picture will appear, from the library's own copy, only once its licence is recorded and is on the library's pass list, and it has been checked for a likeness. Where a reading copy of a work has a picture replaced by a note, or a picture shown only by its text description, the work page links its source, where the pictures can be seen. The notes '[Picture not shown yet]' and, on patents, '[Drawing not shown yet]' are in English in every saved page, whatever the page's language.
How to read a call number
Every work has a call number that does not change, so you can cite it. The person code comes first, then the kind and the year; the last part is a number within that year, given when the work was catalogued and never reused. EIN P1905.04 is on Einstein's shelf: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. A work with no known year takes n.d. in place of the year, as in PAS En.d.01.
- NEW
- Isaac Newton
- FAR
- Michael Faraday
- DAR
- Charles Darwin
- NIG
- Florence Nightingale
- PAS
- Louis Pasteur
- TES
- Nikola Tesla
- CUR
- Marie Skłodowska Curie
- EIN
- Albert Einstein
- L
- Letter
- LS
- Letter collection
- PT
- Patent
- P
- Paper
- E
- Essay
- B
- Book
- LC
- Lecture
- MS
- Manuscript
- A
- Article
- C
- Collection
- N
- News report
- PO
- Poem (translation)
- D
- Dissertation
- NB
- Notebook
Notes you may see on a copy
The numbers are the items in the archive's own list of known limits, so each note can be traced.
- #1The file carries images, and no check is recorded yet that none of them is a picture of the person (the collection keeps no likenesses). (84 works)
- #2Machine-read text (OCR), not proofread, with no page images in the file to check it against. (304 works)
- #3Contains other people's text, or an attribution that is not yet verified. (27 works)
- #4A robots or site-policy slip: fetched from Project Gutenberg's main site, whose policy asks for human visitors only, or by a Wikisource request its robots rules disallow. (18 works)
- #6The source's terms restrict reuse (a copyright notice, a non-commercial licence, research use only, or permission required). The work's source terms say why it is served or held. (232 works)
- #9Saved from Wikisource without a pinned revision number; the revision is recorded inside the file itself. (140 works)
- #10An Internet Archive derivative made from the scan, not the master scan. (204 works)
Dates and ages
A work's year is the one recorded for the copy we hold, usually its first publication. Ages are that year minus the year of birth, so they can be a year out. Works dated after a person's death are mostly first publications of papers and letters they left.
Asking for a work to be withdrawn
If you hold rights in a work here and want it removed, write to rights@longkeeping.com with the work's call number or web address and the basis of your claim. A person reads every request. If a work is withdrawn, its address shows a withdrawal notice; we do not reply by e-mail.