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Open Collections: Home

This guide contains a list of open collections. It is intended to aid Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship applicants as they formulate a research question.

A note on open collections

Although this guide focuses on open content that is freely available for reuse, Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows are not restricted to using public domain or openly-licensed content.  However, DSSFs are strongly encouraged to use material that is not under copyright.  Seeking permission to use copyrighted material can be a long, time-consuming process, and the fellowship's focus is on research and learning digital tools.

This guide is far from an exhaustive list of open collections.  If you're having trouble finding the type of material you'd like to use in your proposed digital project, please reach out to the library's Digital Scholarship Committee (LibraryDS@gettysburg.edu) to schedule a consultation.

Multimedia

Wikimedia Commons
An online repository of media files with open licenses

The Public Domain Review
An online journal that aggregates public domain material from global resources

Text Corpora

Project Gutenberg
A collection of public domain books

HathiTrust
A collection of works from research institutions and libraries around the world.  All of HathiTrust's collection can  be searched, but non-members have limited full-text access.  Check the Full view only box to find full-text results.

Images

NGA Images - National Gallery of Art
High-quality images of public domain works available for download and reuse

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain images available for download.  Check the Open Access box to search images that are freely available to use.

Flickr: The Commons
Images believed to be in the public domain contributed by cultural heritage institutions from around the world