A list of awesome digital collections from libraries and other institutions. Public domain material or a structured API are preferred but not required.
- British Museum - Online research catalogues
- British Library Labs Digital Collections
- Cooper Hewitt - Beautifully photographed collection and excellent API. Only some items (mostly 2D) are public domain.
- NYPL Digital Collections API
- Google Arts & Culture
- Polona - Polish National library, has some English support.
- The European Library
- Penn's Collection of British and American Fiction
- University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
- Library of Congress - The United States Library of Congress digital collections.
- NASA Image and Video Library
- David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
- Heidelberg University Library
- Bibliothèques spécialisées de la Ville de Paris - Page d'accueil
- FIDM Museum & Galleries : Online Collections
- The Met - The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Takes the unusual and laudable step of dedicating photographs of items to the public domain.
- Cambridge Digital Library
- Medical Heritage Library
- Musem of Applied Arts in Budapest - Interesting collections, including one focused on ex-libris, but copyright claims in terms seem over-broad.
- Embassy of the Free Mind - A collection of occult works from Amsterdam's Ritman Library. This article serves as an introduction.
- MKG Online - mostly historic Western and Japanese prints.
- Cleveland Museum of Art - Clear Open Access policy, lots of paintings and sculptures.
- Smithsonian - very high quality images
- Plantin-Moretus Museum Woodcuts - high quality scans of 14000 woodblocks.
- 日本語史研究資料 国立国語研究所蔵 - Historical textual resources from NINJAL.
- Bunka Gakuen Fashion Database - Copyrighted, collections of a Japanese Fashion University.
- National Diet Library - Materials here are only marked public domain after being proven so or special permission from the Culture Minister. Materials that are probably public domain but not proven to be so yet are often available digitally but only on-site.
- 大学史資料センター 写真データベース - Waseda University photo database.
- 慶應義塾写真データベース - 検索条件入力 - Keio University photo database. Has a vague copyright assertion, though most images should be public domain.
To the extent possible under law, Paul O'Leary McCann has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.