Digitization in the Library

McGill Library has a long history of digitizing our rare and special collections and making them available to the world. Our rare and special collections support the teaching, learning, and research needs of McGill students and faculty from all disciplines, and digitizing these items lets us make them available to the wider scholarly community by publishing them online. Our goal is to create preservation quality digital surrogates that can enhance the usability of our collections by opening up new ways of textual searching, analysis, or manipulation. 

Digitization services for research needs

We offer both small scale on demand service and a larger collection level digitization depending on research need.

On demand digitization

If you need an entire book digitized or high quality images for a publication you can submit a digitization request. All requests are evaluated based on:

1. Condition: Is the book in a suitable condition to be scanned safely? Some of our older and rare collections are fragile and may not be available for digitization. Will the condition of the item provide a quality digital image?
2. Copyright: Is the book in the public domain? In Canada copyright expires 50 years after the death of the author and before that you would need to secure the permission from the copyright holder for digitization. Determining copyright can be tricky so contact us for any questions at digitization [dot] library [at] mcgill [dot] ca (subject: Digitization copyright question) if you are unsure. 
3. Collection: Does the item belong to McGill and is in our collection? Does the item represent a unique bibliographic record? If the book is digitized elsewhere we are unlikely to digitize it again unless our copy is unique or we can provide a better quality copy.  

Once your request has been approved we will digitize the book, perform OCR when available and prepare a file for digital delivery within 14 working days. After the file is delivered, we add a copy to our repository and catalogue for others to find and use. Please note that we reserve the right to refuse requests but all requests statistics are kept on file. If there is a demonstrated demand for an item there is a better chance for future digitization approval.  

Collection digitization 

If your research requires a significant number of titles, or you are interested in partnering with the library on a grant requiring digitization work, please contact amy [dot] buckland [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Amy Buckland) directly. We can help connect you with the appropriate collection librarian, help prepare a proposal to the Digitization Project Commiteee and advise on technical standards and project planning. 

Do it yourself scanning for reference

If you need to scan book sections for research use, most of our branches have a self service Spirit Book scanner, some have a self service flat bed scanner and each copier lets you scan to email.