The New York Public Library is developing and executing a visionary strategy for digitization, digital preservation, and access. The Library stewards rapidly growing collections of digitized and born-digital collection items, and it works to make these collections easier to discover, sample, use, and reuse in more creative ways.
Learn about Digital Collections below.
Explore our other current and previous projects and learn about our Digital Research Strategy for 2021–2024.
Digital Collections
Status: Active
Launched: 2014
The New York Public Library Digital Collections contains over 900,000 items. While that is a small fraction of the Library's overall holdings, it is representative of the diversity of our vast collections—from books to videos, maps to manuscripts, illustrations to photos, and more. The service is powered by NYPL's Digital Collections API and is now the Library's central access point for digitized and born-digital materials of all formats. We actively review and label materials in Digital Collections with statements that indicate how you may reuse items, and what sort of permission, if any, you need to do so. To date, there are 310,121 public domain items in Digital Collections, and that number grows every day. You do not need NYPL's permission to use these items and there are no known restrictions on their use. However, these items may be subject to rights of privacy, publicity, or other restrictions depending on the format of the materials and what the items depict. It is your responsibility to respect these rights.
To access Digital Collections, click here.