Guide to finding images in library special and archival collections at McGill and online through open-access image repositories. Open-access images can be freely used for academic, web, and creative purposes.
Not all images digitized and available online are free for re-use. Remember to consult Canadian copyright laws and international regulations when using images from other locations. Please consult the terms of use for each database you consult, and for information regarding Canadian copyright law, see the following guide:
Open access images are either in the Public Domain or covered by a Creative Commons License. In Canada, works enter the public domain 50 years after its creator's death. This varies from country to country, so double check local and relevant copyright laws when using images.
McGill has digitized over 19,000 titles which are openly available on the Internet Archive. These texts are all keyword searchable thanks to OCR, but a better approach to locate images is to search the metadata fields.
Searching for the keywords "Plates" or "Illustrations" is the best approach to narrowing results to items with images. You can then filter results by date range.
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