Salem Public Library owns a number of books about Salem history which have been scanned and made available online through the efforts of the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization founded in 1996 to create an online digital library and preserve it for future historians as well as current users.

The books in this collection cover topics including: vital records, genealogies and family histories churches and cemeteries, military history, industry, geography among others. These titles are owned by Salem Public Library in hard copy, but by following the full text link, you can go directly to the online version and view the scanned copy, as well as search the text of the book by key words.