January 2016 | Rebecca Rego Barry

Opening the NYPL's Digital Collections

The New York Public Library made an exciting announcement last week--it has made available more than 180,000 images of public domain material from its collection as high-resolution downloads. The idea is to "facilitate sharing, research and reuse by scholars, artists, educators, technologists, publishers, and Internet users of all kinds."

Images hail from every nook of the NYPL's rich holdings, from medieval manuscripts to Federal Art Project and Farm Security Administration photographs. Here's a sampling of images that caught our eye:

Thoreau-nypl.digitalcollections.e26fc720-6d0b-0132-8333-58d385a7b928.001.r.jpgHenry David Thoreau's holograph draft manuscript of "Wild Apples," 1850-1860.