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Public Domain Resources

Anything in the public domain is ok to use for any purpose, with or without being modified. things either become public domain after a long period of time (95 years in the US) or when the creator/copyright holder allows them to. That means it's easy and cool to have a vintage-themed blog! A lot of these sources go back to images, particularly art, but I can always add other works under PD!

Copyright law sucks! That being said, these are all really cool places to get the things you need!

now serving.. 29 links!

online museums, libraries and archives

• science history instituteyeah pretty much what you think it is
• new york public library
• getty museum archive
• *wikimedia's public domain image resources BIG sorted list of websites and databases to choose from
• ETH zurich photo archives from the 20th century in zurich
• public.worksearch engine for art in the public domain
• deutsche fotothek german photo archive. site has some translation into english but is primarily in german
• duke university digital collections collections hosted at duke. the collections on the american south and black american history might be the most interesting things here
• icp collectionssadly this is not the insane clown posse but some other tryhards called the international center of photography.. anyway they have early 20th century stuff
• MCNY collectionsi'm not even trying to get stuff specifically from nyc but a lot of archives are concentrated there.. they have historical photography, fashion, and prints
• europeana.eudigital archive sponsored by the eu that aggregates thousands of other archives. has photos and manuscripts
• gallicaarchive of french culture, only in french
• paris musee collections another french archive; photos + fashion. the english version of the site exists but it's functionally only in french

antique art & design

• oldbookillustrations
• FOBOmore old book art
• heritage librarythemed downloadable packs of vintage illustrations
• picture box blue a blog that compiles pretty things from older material: prints, postcards, art etc.
• british library's flickr official flickr account of the british library. a large selection of photos organized into categories
• biodiversity heritage library's flickr old biological illustrations
• NYPL manuscript borders really cool page frames and borders
• vintage american postcards According to Wikipedia, any American postcard pre-1978 is automatically PD.
• library of congress' free-to-use photosets

old books and manuscripts

• LOC world digital libraryInternational Collection from the Library of Congress. A bit difficult to navigate
• science history institute's alchemical texts
• british library manuscript search
• handrit.isicelandic historical archive. great for norse texts!
• SHI historical chemistry libraryIncludes alchemical manuscripts, but is really anything chemistry related pre-1900
• provenance online projectManuscripts, stamps and engravings. Sorted mainly by university library they are held at.
• the bestiary800 pictures of beasts. What more could you need..

open access

• OA.mg "OA.mg is a search engine for academic papers, specialising in Open Access".
• JSTOR JSTOR is a major archive of research papers, primarily in the social sciences and humanities. you can sign up for a free account and access 100 articles a day. kind of a two for one, too, since they have PD images..
• zbib really easy to use bibliography maker
• zotero free citation manager, good for writing a thesis, self-educating or just going on deep dives.
• honorable mentions to anna's archive, libgen and scihub, bc they let you access damn near every book or research paper in existence. not going to list their domains here since they frequently move and have several mirror sites, check r/piracy or r/scihub for the most recent safe links.