British library flickr

I really like the image above.

The British Library may have pushed at a bigger door than it knows. Britain's pre-eminent research library has just put a million images from its collections on to Flickr. These pictures are free not just to browse but to use and reuse: the library even wants members of the public to research them in an experiment in crowdsourced history. Which is all great fun — but it raises massive questions about whether it is ethical to copyright or restrict the publication of any historical art, ever. The images set free by the British Library come from books published between the 17th and 19th centuries, but they do not include masterpieces.

British library flickr

Allow Reuse, Redistribute, Revise and Remix for educational and non-commercial purposes. Images uploaded to the site are released to Flickr Commons with no known copyright restrictions. Image from British Library Flickr Commons. For more information on acknowledging images with other citation styles, refer here. Please check their Terms of Use for full details before using images. You must be logged in to post a comment. Description A descriptive note detailing the content and context of the digital collection. Since , British Library released more than 1 million images to Flickr Commons. The images are arranged by different themes, such as book covers, illustrated letters, maps, flora and children book illustrations. Users may get started by viewing the Collection Highlights. Read more about the project here. Collection Type Broad terms that define the type of digital collection.

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The British Library may have pushed at a bigger door than it knows. Britain's pre-eminent research library has just put a million images from its collections on to Flickr. These pictures are free not just to browse but to use and reuse: the library even wants members of the public to research them in an experiment in crowdsourced history. Which is all great fun — but it raises massive questions about whether it is ethical to copyright or restrict the publication of any historical art, ever. The images set free by the British Library come from books published between the 17th and 19th centuries, but they do not include masterpieces. They are curiosities. A collagist like Max Ernst could have a lot of fun pasting them together to create surreal fantasies — and perhaps that is exactly what the internet will do with these steampunk exotica. It has not offered free use of its real visual treasures.

British library flickr

Browsing the collection is thrilling, like venturing into a wild and treasure-filled thicket without a map. This incredible visual bounty includes maps, drawings, illustrations, handwritten letters, geological diagrams, cartoons, comics, posters, and decorative scrolls. While each image on Flickr links back to a PDF of the source book, the sheer volume means that librarians cannot have a good handle on the nature of each image that the Mechanical Curator has flagged. So how have people been using the images?

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It has not offered free use of its real visual treasures. Sign up for notifications from Insider! I really like the image above. Description A descriptive note detailing the content and context of the digital collection. The images set free by the British Library come from books published between the 17th and 19th centuries, but they do not include masterpieces. Redeem now. Unlike collections that merely happen to have a Filippo Lippi painting and so can charge for its publication, the American space agency is the "creator" of space photographs taken by the Hubble telescope. BI: Was there any particular reason Flickr was used and not other photo sharing websites? They are curiosities. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification. BL: The power of this project is to see and explore printed works in novel and surprising ways, to experiment with ways of researching that is not simply 'viewing a book, online'. It's not the first project of its kind — Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic writes that the national museum of the Netherlands released more than , images online earlier this year, and the Library of Congress has also attempted similar crowdsourcing projects — but the enormous scale of the British Library project and the range of the images dwarfs previous projects. When will holders of great art recognise that it now circulates freely online, and stop charging print publishers, authors, magazines and newspapers for its use? Yet it makes these images freely available for universal use. This big bold act of generosity only scratches the surface.

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Isn't it time to go where Nasa has boldly gone and make all pictures free? Thanks for signing up! British Library staging exhibition of comics in 'overdue' celebration of genre. One institution that leads the way may seem unlikely — it is Nasa. Flickr allows users to browse through many images at once, search, tag and comment on individual images within our collection which provides us, and everyone else, with a better understanding of what these images portray. BI: How many more books and images does the British Library have that could be digitized and uploaded in such a way? Every time one of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings from the Royal Collection is published in a book, the Queen gets a pay day. But what is the point of a huge project like this? The images that have been released are the kind of curios that have for many years been published by companies like Dover for free use. Image from British Library Flickr Commons. Loading Comments Thankfully, the British Library isn't content to let their unloved, unread books slowly turn into dust. These pictures are free not just to browse but to use and reuse: the library even wants members of the public to research them in an experiment in crowdsourced history. I'm lucky to have ever seen the image at all.