Quire

Create scholarly, visually rich digital books that last

Online ∙ Print ∙ E‑book

Quire is an open-source multiformat publishing tool designed for longevity, discoverability, and scholarship. Using a single set of plain text files, Quire creates books as authoritative and enduring as print and as vibrant and feature-rich as the web—all without paying a fee or maintaining a complicated server.

Created by Getty, free to use.

Quire is an ideal solution for anyone seeking to publish beautiful digital books optimized for visual imagery and designed to ensure widely accessible and stable content.

Quire allows for greater preservation and digital distribution of works in a simplified format.

—Kris Thayer, Minneapolis Institute of Art

  • Affordable Open source and does not require proprietary software or ongoing maintenance fees
  • Discoverable Increased visibility by publishing as PDF, e-book, website, or print-on-demand
  • Sustainable Based around static site generation and plain text files ensuring stability and longevity
  • Book-like Built-in understanding of high-quality, scholarly publishing with clean, modern design
  • Issue No.7 Summer 2015, Research Journal, Edited by Angela McShane

    Victoria and Albert Museum

    Journal | 2024

    Quire users: @vanda @smithfield-studio

  • The State of Museum Digital Practice | 2022. A collection of graduate essays. Museums and Technology | George Washington University.

    Museum Studies at the George Washington University

    Essay Collection | 2022

    Quire users: @shineslike @gealbers

  • On the right is an impressionist image of a boy painting. It is paired with a list of essays that comprise the publication on the left of the screen.

    Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields

    Research Paper | 2024

    Quire user: @daniel-keller

  • Blue Gold: The Art and Science of Indigo

    Mingei International Museum

    Exhibition Catalogue | 2025

    Quire users: @Kehrigburgess @daltonrooney

  • Artful Living: O'Keeffe & Modern Design, Exhibition Guide, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

    Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

    Exhibition Guide | 2024

    Quire user: @lizneely

Features & Functionality

Customizable Design

Allows for a wide range of possible custom features and styles

icon showing a wrench and a paintbrush crossed

Multimedia Support

Expands rich scholarship with embedded audio, video, deep-zooming images and more

icon indicating a picture, a video player and an audio player

Single-source Publishing

Multiformat output from a single set of source files speeds production without duplicating effort

icon showing a computer, book, and tablet

Simplified Structure

Keeps source content in nonspecialized plain text to ensure reusability

icon showing a plain text document

The Quire Community

illustration showing a diverse array of stylized people’s faces in multiple colors

Quire is used by a growing community of scholars, publishers, curators, developers, and the digitally curious. The Quire community is vibrant and diverse, representing a broad spectrum of institutions that provide vital scholarship in the arts and humanities, at all sizes and scales. We support and empower our community at every level of technical experience. All are welcome.

Joining the Quire community is as easy as becoming a user, sharing your work, contributing code, or attending/hosting a Quire event, among other exciting opportunities.