early modern digital collections

A view of the Folger's vault (© @pleasant_peasants)
A view of the Folger’s vault (©pleasant_peasants)

A list of digital collections of early printed books that are primarily hi-resolution public domain images (descriptions of copyright and licensing are simplifications focused on early modern materials, linked to full information).1I interpret vague statements of “we conform to the law” in light of Bridgeman v Corel, which states that faithful reproductions of public domain works are themselves public domain. With European Union copyright laws ruling similarly, I don’t know why any of these libraries are holding images hostage behind non-commercial licenses. (I do know why. $$.) I am not a lawyer, of course, so you should rely on your own—or your legal counsel’s—judgement here. Know of other open digital collections I should include? Email me.2Want more peeks into the Folger’s collections? Follow @pleasant_peasants’s Instagram! My thanks to Pleasant for permission to use this photo of STC books in the vault. (updated November 14, 2019)

open digital collections | aggregators | download from IA!

open digital collections

Aggregators

  • Antwerp might seem like just a city, but it’s a city chock full of printed heritage and so its DAMS pulls together rich access to the city’s goodies under a big public domain tent, including the Hendrik Conscience Collection and Museum Plantin-Moretus. There’s also an aggregator for Flanders, which of course overlaps, but Flandrica.be doesn’t work from a public domain assumption and some institutions lead to different platforms and terms under the two. Plantin-Moretus, for instance, is better accessed through the Antwerp DAMS since its materials are public access there, but its collections reached through Flandrica.be are personal use only.3Once something is placed in the public domain, it stays in the public domain, so if the same book is in both places, it doesn’t really matter what the more restrictive license says. I haven’t, however, gone through and checked to see if the material duplicates across the two collections or if different items appear in different homes. But KU Leuven’s digital collections are more easily navigated and downloaded (public domain!) from Flandrica.be than from the university site, so both are worth poking around.
  • The Biodiversity Heritage Library has more than you might think and the interface is easy to use; I like to browse by year and downloading is easy (instructions for hi-res downloads; public domain with specifications on each item)
  • HathiTrust is better for searching than browsing; quality of imaging varies and some works can only be downloaded from within partner institutions (although non-partners can download individual pages); generally with more trustworthy metadata and an easier interface than other aggregators (right-click to save as image; generally public domain, though read the Google exception and see records for details)
  • Internet Archive has plenty of early printed material. Be very careful, though, that what you’re looking at is not a facsimile—don’t trust the metadata but verify in the book itself, at the front and at the back (see, e.g., this book which appears to be a 1541 Hungarian New Testament, but is actually a 1960 facsimile).
    • To download individual files, find the primary URL of the book (e.g., https://archive.org/details/johnsons_dictionary_1755). Replace /details/ with /download/ (e.g., https://archive.org/download/johnsons_dictionary_1755) to see all the files you can download. For images, you’ll want to work with either /images.zip or the /jp2.zip; click on the “view contents” link that follows those directories and you’ll get a long list of all the images in either png or jp2 formats. From that, you can download individual pages!
  • Primeros Libros de las Americas brings together copies (sometimes multiple copies) of books printed in the Americas in the 16th century in an interface that’s easy to browse and navigate (right-click to save jpg, although in some cases you can get a larger image by going to the owning institution; public domain)
  • Libraries in Switzerland are brought together in e-rara.ch, which is delightfully easy to browse by date and to use in general (public domain)
  • Catalogs! Many union catalogs include links to digitized copies; if you’re looking for something specific, those can often be the best place to start. You can browse my list of catalogs of early printed works (licensing varies)

Wait, I can’t believe you don’t include ……

The following notable collections aren’t included in my list above because they don’t meet my set of terms, primarily because they’re non-commercial or personal use only:4This doesn’t list everything that doesn’t meet my criteria because that would be crazy, but it does list the notable ones. Why do I hate non-commercial licenses? Because a) public domain is public domain and institutions should stop eating up the commons; it’s not even profitable anymore to be so restrictive. And b) NC licensing is way more restrictive than people tend to realize: a site that is free to use and lets people use its materials freely still cannot use images with NC terms if that site—like EarlyPrintedBooks.com—is associated with a commercial product.

  • Digital Bodleian is chock full of great things, so many of them, and their interface is great. But their terms explicitly state that they are “only for non-commercial purposes, including but not limited to private study, research, or teaching and instruction within an educational establishment” (bold theirs; italic mine). Since my work is not within an educational establishment and it is often connected to my book, I am SOL here, but you might not be.
  • Biblioteca Nationale Hispánica, the digital collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de España, has great early print and manuscripts, but is mostly CC BY-NC-SA.
  • Cambridge University Library is chock full of great things, an easy interface, and often super contextual information—especially the Royal Library and Lines of Thought collections—but it is, alas, non-commercial only (see terms and licenses on individual items).
  • English Broadside Ballads Archive (U California Santa Barbara) is an amazing resource that is CC BY-NC; note however that EBBA includes ballads from Houghton, the Huntington, and NLS, libraries that make their items available on their own platforms as public domain images.
  • Gallica, the digital collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is awesome and confusing: the terms say it’s non-commercial use only and individual items are labeled public domain. I’m keeping it in limbo until they clear it up.
  • Linda Hall Library has great science- and technology-related collections but is CC BY-NC-SA.
  • Das Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek (the Munich DigitiZation Center or MDZ in either language) is chock-full of relevant material, some of it hi-res and some of it less ideal, but it’s all for non-commercial use only.
  • Aggregators I don’t love:
    • Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is not great for browsing, but it does lets you search across a lot of American libraries at once (downloadable format and licenses vary according to institution)
    • Europeana is hard to search and hard to browse; even though it brings together a lot of European collections, it’s still a last resort (their hints might help; downloadable formats and licenses vary according to institution)
    • Google Books. Should we talk about clean metadata? And being able to download image files? Well, then. Proceed at your own risk.

notes

  • 1
    I interpret vague statements of “we conform to the law” in light of Bridgeman v Corel, which states that faithful reproductions of public domain works are themselves public domain. With European Union copyright laws ruling similarly, I don’t know why any of these libraries are holding images hostage behind non-commercial licenses. (I do know why. $$.) I am not a lawyer, of course, so you should rely on your own—or your legal counsel’s—judgement here.
  • 2
    Want more peeks into the Folger’s collections? Follow @pleasant_peasants’s Instagram! My thanks to Pleasant for permission to use this photo of STC books in the vault.
  • 3
    Once something is placed in the public domain, it stays in the public domain, so if the same book is in both places, it doesn’t really matter what the more restrictive license says. I haven’t, however, gone through and checked to see if the material duplicates across the two collections or if different items appear in different homes.
  • 4
    This doesn’t list everything that doesn’t meet my criteria because that would be crazy, but it does list the notable ones. Why do I hate non-commercial licenses? Because a) public domain is public domain and institutions should stop eating up the commons; it’s not even profitable anymore to be so restrictive. And b) NC licensing is way more restrictive than people tend to realize: a site that is free to use and lets people use its materials freely still cannot use images with NC terms if that site—like EarlyPrintedBooks.com—is associated with a commercial product.