Human Interest
12 million historic images uploaded─── 12:13 Fri, 29 Aug 2014
Washington - An American academic is creating a searchable database of 12 million historic copyright-free images.
Kalev Leetaru has already uploaded 2.6 million pictures to Flickr, which are searchable thanks to tags that have been automatically added.
The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library books scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation. These images have been difficult to access until now.
The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library books scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation. These images have been difficult to access until now.
Leetaru says digitisation projects have so far focused on words and ignored pictures. He says most of the images that are in the books are not in any of the art galleries of the world - the original copies have long ago been lost.
Visitors to the site are free to copy and make use of the pictures without charge. The pictures range from 1500 to 1922, when copyright restrictions kick in.
BBC
