Overview

Download options vary by collection, but the basic process is similar. This page provides detailed instructions for downloading images of digital reproductions available in the Digital Special Collections, as well as brief tips for downloading items from collections with other file types.

Access the download section

After navigating to an item to download, the "Download Options" button can be found on the righthand side of the page, between the viewer and the "Descriptive information" section below the viewer. The "Download Options" button is highlighted in orange in the screenshot below.

Users may also scroll down to the bottom of the browser window to expand the "Download Options" section by clicking to open it.

Users can download individual images from items or download entire items. Items with multiple pages may be available for download as a PDF. Follow the steps below to download images or PDFs.

Standard Download Options

Entire items, single images from items, or PDFs of entire items may be available depending on the type of content.

Original Files

Original files for items are available for download. These are often higher-quality images. 

Users may click Zip of Original Files or Original File (TIFF). Zip of Original Files will compress all of the images from the item together. The message informs users the zip of the files includes high-resolution TIFF file format. These tend to be larger files. Users can choose to download files in batches, or zip all of the images at once. Be mindful of hard drive space on your computers. These images and items will use up more space. The Zip of Original Files button is highlighted in orange below. 

Users may click on Original File (TIFF) button to download a single image. The "Original File (TIFF)" button is outlined in the orange box in the screenshot below.

Downloading JPEG files

To download individual JPEG images, see the instructions for "Custom Download Options" below. For JPEG files of an entire item, click the "Zip of JPEGs" button. JPEG files will be smaller (take up less hard drive space) than the original TIFF files. Users are asked to complete a math problem and click the Download button. The file will be prepared. Users may view the progress bar while the Zip file is prepared. When it's ready, a green download button will appear.

Downloading PDF files

Click the PDF bottom to download a PDF. Then click the green Download button. If the item has searchable text, the PDF of the images will also be keyword searchable. Please note, PDFs are only searchable for machine-readable text. Not all collections provide searchable PDFs.

Custom Download Options

The "Custom image" button will give users options to select the format, size, and quality of an image select a file to download by reviewing the thumbnails.

After clicking the "Custom image" button, select the format and quality of the file needed. 

• Original File (TIFF) - Highest quality or resolution image. Will automatically download a larger TIFF files of the item which can be used to print or reproduce the image. Most Original File (TIFFS) are 600 DPI, 16-bit, Adobe RGB files, however there are variations.
• Custom Image.  User may select the quality, color, and type of file to download. 
• Pixels - Select the pixel array of the files ranging from 100% to 13% size.  
• Color - select bitonal, which is black and white, gray, and color.
• File Format - TIFF, JPEG,  GIF, PNG
• User may also use the HTML tag to imbed and image from the digital collection into a website.

Some collections will have non-image files, such as word processing files, presentation slides, audio or video files. After navigating to the item of interest, locate the "Download Options" section, either with the "Download Options" button above the descriptive information about the item, or in the "Download Options" section at the bottom of the page.

For non-image formats, typically only one download option is available. The download button will provide information about the type of the file to be downloaded (for example the download button will display as "Original File (application/rtf)" for a Rich Text Format document and "Original File (PDF)" for a PDF.

If a collection displays as a folder and file browse viewer, users can download the contents of entire folders at once. First navigate to the folder of interest. On the viewer, below any descriptive information available, a list of files will display. From here click the "Zip of Original Files" button to download the contents of the folder as a Zip file. Alternatively, individual files can be downloaded from this list as well (see "Downloading Other File Types" above for more guidance on this process if needed).