Is BHL data free to reuse?

Yes of course! The BHL makes its metadata available for public use under the CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This Creative Commons license allows you to reuse, modify, repurpose, and distribute the metadata for all purposes including commercial and non-commercial, with no need to ask for permission.

Metadata in this case, refers to:

  • Library catalog records, i.e. bibliographic data, used to describe the books and journals in the BHL collection (e.g. title and author data).
  • Page level data such as page numbers and pages types (e.g. “Title page” and “Illustration”).
  • Scientific name data, e.g. “Zea mays”.

Go ahead, take our metadata and do something creative with it! If you do repurpose BHL metadata please share your story with us. We often like to feature stories of reuse on our BHL blog.

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