Pages from a hand-lettered decorative manuscript

McGill Libraries have a long history of digitizing our rare and special collections to support the teaching, learning, and research needs of the McGill community in addition to making them available to the world. Our goal is to create preservation-quality digital surrogates that enhance usability by enabling full-text search, digital analysis, and other forms of scholarly engagement.

Digitization requests are evaluated based on the following factors:

  • Condition: Is the book in a suitable condition to be scanned safely? Will the condition of the item provide a quality digital image?
  • Copyright: Is the book in the public domain? In Canada copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. If you are not sure, contact copyright [at] mcgill.ca (copyright[at]mcgill[dot]ca). Otherwise, we will only digitize under a Fair Dealing exception and limit scanning to 10 pages/images.
  • Collection: The item must be in McGill Libraries’ collection. Does a digitized copy already exist? We will digitize an item if McGill’s copy is unique or your project requires a higher quality scan.

On demand digitization

If you need a few items for personal or scholarly use you can submit a on demand digitization request that can be digitized and put online in accordance with Canadian Copyright Law.

If your item is still under copyright, you may:

Materials accepted for digitization will be available within 10 working days. A copy will also be added to our online repositories and the Libraries’ catalogue. We limit individual user requests to 10 items.  

If you need high resolution image reproductions for personal or scholarly use or for publication or commercial uses, please contact Rare Books and Special Collections or the holding library directly.

Submit a digitization request

Project and collection level 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 gregory.houston [at] mcgill.ca (Greg Houston) directly. We can help connect you with the appropriate collection librarian, prepare a proposal to the Digitization Project Committee, advise on technical standards and project planning.

Each project proposal is evaluated using our digitization guidelines and requires a completed project proposal form. You can find examples of past projects on our digital exhibitions and collections page.

Propose a digitization project