The following resources do not require a Library card.
Bodleian Library
The University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library has been collecting and preserving cultural artifacts for more than four centuries, and now many of those materials are accessible for free online. Their digital collections include a Gutenberg Bible and pages from an original draft of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The British Library
The national library of the United Kingdom, the British Library has more items cataloged than any other library in the world. Many of those holdings are available to peruse online, including thousand-year-old maps of Great Britain and original copies of the Magna Carta.
The Clark Art Institute
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library’s digital collections emphasize rare and unique materials selected from the Library’s Special Collections and include materials from the David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical Reproduction, the Artists’ Books Collection, the Study Collection of Photographs and Clippings, and the Archives. Featured materials include digitized books, finding aids, ephemera, photographs, and electronic files.
Duke University Library’s Digital Collections
Digitized historic photographs, advertisements, texts & more from Duke’s unique library collections.
The Frick Pittsburgh
The Frick Digital Collection enables visitors to browse and download jpegs of large format digital files created through projects supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Henry Luce Foundation and METRO. The collections include photoarchive images and documentation, book materials, Frick Collection images, and archival documents.
Green Mountain Digital Archive
Did you know about the Digital Public Library of America, which features 63,000 items ready for you to view from the Green Mountain Digital Archive? The archive contains Vermont images and digital objects all in one place.
Harvard University
Harvard boasts the oldest library in the United States and the largest academic library in the world. Members of the public can discover more than six million items from their collection online—highlights include two original Mozart manuscripts and Chinese stone rubbings dating back to 200 BCE.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 418 billion archived web pages.
Library of Congress Digitized Collections
The Library of Congress’ digital collections provides open access to full text historical documents and materials. Includes written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.
LibriVox
This site offers public domain audiobooks recorded by volunteers for free use on any relevant device. Like Gutenberg, they tend to be items published before 1924.
MetPublications
Five decades of publications on art history from the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, available to read, download, and/or search for free.
Museum of Modern Art Exhibition History (Digital Archive)
Exhibitions from MOMA’s founding in 1929 to the present are available online. These pages are updated continually.
National Emergency Library
This project by Internet Archive offers a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Explore 889,967 items digitized from The New York Public Library’s collections. This site is a living database with new materials added every day, featuring prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more.
Project Gutenberg
This site offers thousands of public domain ebooks for free use on any device. Because they are public domain, they are typically limited to items published before 1924, but that still includes a wide range of classics.
Smithsonian Digital Collections
The Smithsonian’s digital collections include over 35,000 digitized books and manuscripts (available in either the Digital Library or as part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library) as well as digitized photo collections, ephemera, and seed catalogs.
University of Vermont Libraries’ Digital Collections
U.S. National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
Digital Collections is the National Library of Medicine’s free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, still images, videos, and maps. The content in Digital Collections is freely available worldwide and, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. Digital Collections provides unique access to NLM’s rich historical resources, as well as select modern resources.
Vermont Historical Society Digital Resources
The Vermont Historical Society strives to make its collections available to users through digitization technology, including manuscript transcriptions, photographs, films and video, maps, and more.
