This paper explores issues surrounding historical archive materials that are currently not housed in a conventional archive, using a case study of biomedical illustrations created for the textbook, Grant's Atlas of Anatomy. The paper explores the following issues:• Resolving intellectual property issues when a commercial publisher owns the copyright to archival materials with high research value;• Determining what are the archival copies - the original drawings or the digital copies and where both the originals and the digital copies should be housed;• Ensuring long-term sustainability for digital archival materials that are not housed in a traditional archives.Our multi-disciplinary research project team is seeking solutions that meet the needs of all the stakeholders while ensuring the drawings are available for current and future generations of researchers. The answers lie in creative dialog between the rightsholders, the medical illustrator creator community, researchers and archivists. For the Grant's Atlas illustrations, the dialogue has at least begun.