Archives Department

An ever-increasing percentage of the collections has been digitized and made freely available online. Patrons may visit the Internet Archive and Digital Commonwealth to view a portion of the Library’s special collections online.

Special Collections works with internal and external partners to increase the accessibility of our collections via digitization. Digitization involves either scanning or photographing materials at a high resolution in order to make the images available to researchers anywhere in the world. 

Digitization is generally used as a tool to increase the accessibility of library materials. Sometimes it is used as a form of preservation if materials are especially fragile and deteriorating. We are constantly striving to digitize more collections, though limits of professional staff time and the cost of digitization prevents us from digitizing everything and making it all available online.

In most cases the BPL does not hold the copyright to the items in our collections. Furthermore, we do not assert any additional restrictions on copies of these items beyond those that might exist in the original. 

As such, we cannot grant or deny permission to use copies of these items. It is the sole responsibility of the user to make their own determination about what types of usage might be permissible under U.S. and international copyright law. Provision of a copy from the BPL should not be construed as explicit permission to use it for any particular reason. 

Exceptions to copyright restrictions include:

• Fair use. Some use cases for copyrighted materials are allowed under fair use. For more information, see the U.S. Copyright Office's Information on Fair Use. 
• Public domain. Once a work's copyright term has expired it enters the public domain.  For more information, including how to calculate an item's copyright expiration, see the Cornell Library's Copyright Term and the Public Domain Public Domain.

For more information on publishing with our collections visit the Publish with Our Special Collections page on the Special Collections website.

Access rights document what portions of a collection can be made available for research and when.

Collections usually have consistent access rights statements where the collection is either completely open for research or closed until a certain date, as stipulated by the donor or the repository. These statements can also be applied to different groupings of materials based on their content.

Researchers can find guidance on each collection's accessibility in its finding aid. 

When citing materials found in BPL archival collections, please use “Boston Public Library” in the credit line to help future researchers locate the original material. 

Below are templates for citing archival collections and items held by the BPL:

• Collection: Collection title, call number. Boston Public Library.
• Item: Item title, date. Collection title, call number. Boston Public Library.

Email BPL's archives team with questions about citing our materials.

For more information on citing our collections visit the Publish with Our Special Collections page on the Special Collections website.

Orphan works are items for which the copyright holder cannot be determined or located.

Anyone who plans to publish or reuse materials that are in copyright, and whose use case does not meet fair-use standards, must attempt to identify and contact the copyright holder for permission to publish before using the material. If asserting that an item is an orphan work, be sure to document your efforts to find the copyright holder, in case your claim is ever challenged.

For more information and recommended guidelines on using orphan works, see the Society of American Archivists' Orphan Works: Statement of Best Practices.