Can I reuse / publish something I find in the BHL?

Many of the items in BHL’s collection are in the public domain and free to reuse without risk of copyright infringement. Check the field to determine the copyright status of any given item in our collection.


BHL does our best to indicate the copyright status of each item digitized by our partner institutions. Ultimately, BHL does not hold copyright on the materials in our collection and cannot grant permission. It is up to you to review the copyright status of the image or item you wish to reuse and abide by any copyright restrictions that may apply.

Generally speaking, the country where you plan to use the content and the nature of the use dictate what you can/cannot do as well as the level of risk involved. Commercial use carries higher risk than non-commercial use and in different countries there are different copyright laws governing use. Please review the copyright law for the country in which you plan to use or publish the content. BHL recommends consulting the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Lex database at for further information.

If the content you wish to reuse is from a work where the is…:

“In copyright. Digitized with the permission of the rights holder.”

…you may use the materials for non-commercial purposes so long as you provide attribution to the rights holder and share the materials under the same license. Please see the specific terms set forth in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY-NC-SA license).

Tags: permission, reuse, republication, licensing, license, copyright