Wikipedia
In use6.9M+ English articles
Card titles, summaries, dates and the links that connect cards to one another.
Text under CC BY-SA 4.0, credited back to Wikipedia on every card.
Visit WikipediaWhere this comes from
Sources
Open Archives is built entirely from public archives that allow free reuse. Nothing here is scraped from behind a paywall, and every image we keep carries a public-domain or Creative Commons licence recorded next to it. Below is every collection we draw on, what it gives us, and how it is licensed.
In use today
These archives supply the cards, images and metadata you see across the site right now.
Wikidata
In use115M+ structured items
Classification — is a card a person, place, thing or event — plus countries, roles, genres and tags.
CC0. Free for any use.
Visit WikidataWikimedia Commons
In use100M+ media files
Nearly every card image on the site. We only accept freely licensed files and drop fair-use ones.
Public domain or Creative Commons, with artist and license recorded per image.
Visit Wikimedia CommonsSmithsonian Open Access
In use5M+ open items
Museum objects, specimens and photographs with dates, places and institutional credit — searchable under Databases.
CC0. We import only records the Smithsonian marks CC0.
Visit Smithsonian Open AccessNotion research bases
In useCurated lists
Hand-built subject lists (for example the insect species master list) used to seed themed pages.
Used as a checklist only; the content itself still comes from the open archives above.
Visit Notion research basesGoogle News RSS
In useContinuous feed
The latest news headlines shown alongside cards, collections and web pages.
Headlines and links only, always pointing back to the publisher.
Visit Google News RSSNext up
Large public archives with real APIs and clear licensing that we are building importers for.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
PlannedMillions of items
Historic photographs, maps, prints and manuscripts with rich dates and places.
Mostly public domain; rights are stated per item.
Visit Library of Congress Digital CollectionsChronicling America
PlannedAll 50 states, through 1963
Digitised American newspapers, full-text searchable.
Public domain.
Visit Chronicling AmericaInternet Archive
Planned1 trillion+ web captures, millions of texts
Books, film, audio, software and the Wayback Machine.
Varies by item; we would take only clearly free material.
Visit Internet ArchiveEuropeana
Planned60M+ items
Aggregated European galleries, libraries, archives and museums — 34M images, 24.5M texts.
Varies by contributing institution; filtered to open licences.
Visit EuropeanaDPLA
Planned53.5M+ items
The US equivalent of Europeana, pulling from state and regional hubs.
Metadata CC0; the object itself lives on the partner site.
Visit DPLAGallica (BnF)
PlannedMillions of items
The French national library's digitised books, press, maps and images.
Largely public domain with a documented API.
Visit Gallica (BnF)Trove
PlannedNational scale
Australia's national newspaper and heritage archive.
Free with an API key.
Visit TroveNational Archives Catalog (NARA)
PlannedHundreds of millions of pages
US federal records, photographs and film.
Overwhelmingly public domain as US government work.
Visit National Archives Catalog (NARA)UK National Archives Discovery
Planned32M+ records
An index across British archives.
Mostly descriptive metadata; scans vary.
Visit UK National Archives DiscoveryDavid Rumsey Map Collection
Planned100k+ maps
Historical cartography at very high resolution.
CC BY-NC-SA for most scans.
Visit David Rumsey Map CollectionHathiTrust
Planned18M+ volumes
Digitised research library books; about a third readable in full.
Public domain volumes only.
Visit HathiTrustMusic discovery directory
A directory of 59 places to find music — databases, radio stations, record stores, magazines and digging tools. These are links out, not sources we copy from: nearly all of them are privately owned and reserve their rights. The exception is Discogs, whose release data is openly licensed even though its images are not.
Browse the directoryHow we handle rights
- Images are only kept when the source states a public-domain or Creative Commons licence.
- Licence, artist and credit are stored with every image and shown on the card.
- Fair-use or all-rights-reserved files are removed automatically during our regular sweeps.
- Every card links back to the archive that holds the original record.
- A share of what the site earns goes to the Wikimedia Foundation.