Repositories of TeX material
To aid the archiving and retrieval of of TeX-related files, a
TUG working group developed the Comprehensive TeX Archive
Network (CTAN). Each CTAN site has identical material,
and maintains authoritative versions of its material. These
collections are extensive; in particular, almost everything mentioned
in this FAQ
is archived at the CTAN sites (see the lists of software at the
end of each answer).
There are two main CTAN sites (in Germany and the UK),
but users should ordinarily collect material via the
CTAN mirror redirector
(which connects you to a mirror that is in some sense “near” to
you).
To access a particular thing through the mirror.ctan.org
mechanism, simply place the CTAN path after the base
URL; so
http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/footmisc/ will
connect you to the footmisc directory at some CTAN
mirror.
For details of how to find files at CTAN sites, see
“finding (La)TeX files”.
The TeX user who has no access to any sort of
network may buy a copy of the archive as part of the
TeX Live distribution; the disc is, necessarily, out
of date, but it is likely to be better than what (if anything) came
with your operating system.
This answer last edited: 2012-12-14
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=archives