

Did you know that more than 180,000 of the items in our Digital Collections are in the public domain?

That means everyone has the freedom to enjoy and reuse these materials in almost limitless ways. The Library now makes it possible to download such items in the highest resolution available directly from the Digital Collections website.

No permission required. No restrictions on use.

Below you'll find tools, projects, and explorations designed to inspire your own creations—go forth and reuse!

Visualize the Public Domain An experiment by NYPL Labs to help patrons understand and explore what is contained in this release. Browse by century, genre, collection, or color.

Discover the Collections Learn more about our public domain release. Our blog post series will talk about what it means, and where you can go with these materials.

Use Our Data and Utilities Our digitized collections are available as machine-readable data: over one million records for you to search, crawl and compute. Check out our API or download the data from GitHub.

Public Domain Remixes As a way to introduce you to our public domain collections and inspire new works, NYPL Labs has developed a suite of projects that show some of the possibilities contained in this rich material.

Navigating the Green Books In the age of segregation, the Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, bars, and gas stations where black travelers were welcomed. Map out trips you would take with this tool.

Mansion Maniac A maze-building game that lets you explore mansion floor plans from early 20th century New York City, sourced from the Apartment Houses of the Metropolis collection.