SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

August 29, 2014 by Gary Price

Wow! An Intro to the Internet Archive Book Images Collection (2.6 Million Historic Copyright-Free Images) Available on Flickr

August 29, 2014 by Gary Price

UPDATE: Internet Archive Joins The Commons on Flickr
As you’ll read below the technology to prepare and upload these images to Flickr is is the work of one person. Impressive!!! Of course, credit also to the Internet Archive for digitizing the books and making them accessible to all.
From the BBC:

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 book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation.
[Clip]
Mr Leetaru began work on the project while researching communications technology at Georgetown University in Washington DC as part of a fellowship sponsored by Yahoo, the owner of photo-sharing service Flickr.
To achieve his goal, Mr Leetaru wrote his own software to work around the way the books had originally been digitised.
[Clip]
As part of the process, the software recognised which parts of a page were pictures in order to discard them.
Mr Leetaru’s code used this information to go back to the original scans, extract the regions the OCR program had ignored, and then save each one as a separate file in the Jpeg picture format.
The software also copied the caption for each image and the text from the paragraphs immediately preceding and following it in the book.

Read More About the Collection and Technology in the Complete BBC Article (792 Words)
Direct to Internet Archive Book Images
On a related note, last December we posted about an online collection from the British Library of more than one million images taken from digitized books first published in the 17th, 18th and 19th century books

Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, News

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Report: "Australian Authors to Receive Compensation for E-Book Loans for First Time"

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Authors, illustrators, and editors will be compensated for e-book and audiobook library borrowings for the first time, in a move by the federal government to ...

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Publishes  Customer Research Agenda

From the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has posted its . A draft Customer Research Agenda was open for public review and comment ...

Report: "A Watermark for Chatbots Can Expose Text Written by an AI"

From MIT Technology Review: Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a ...

The Accessibility of Federal Information and Data: A Brief Overview of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (Updated...

From the Congressional Research Service: Nearly one in four Americans has a disability, according to 2018 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Congress has recognized that in addition to making ...

NY Times: "New York Public Library Acquires Joan Didion’s Papers"

From The NY Times: When [Joan] Didion died in 2021 at age 87, the news set off an outpouring of tributes to a writer who fused penetrating insight and idiosyncratic personal voice, ...

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: María Estorino Named Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian

Below, Find the Full Text of a Letter Sent to the Carolina Community From Kevin M. Guskiewicz University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and J. ...

Boston Public Library Celebrates Black History Month with Annual “Black Is…” Booklist & Special Events

From the Boston Public Library: The Boston Public Library is proud to contribute to the celebration of Black History Month with its annual “Black Is…” booklist. The booklist aims to commemorate ...

Research Resources: New Online Tool Provides Health Snapshot of All 435 U.S. Congressional Districts (Congressional District Health Dashboard)

From NYU Langone: Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, unveiled the Congressional District Health Dashboard (CDHD), a new online tool that ...

Report: "cOAlition S Confirms the End of Its Financial Support for Open Access Publishing Under Transformative Arrangements After...

From a cOAlition S  Announcement: Transformative arrangements – including Transformative Agreements and Transformative Journals – were developed to encourage subscription journals to transition to full and immediate open access within a defined timeframe (31st December 2024, ...

Library of Congress: Hannah Sommers Appointed New Associate Librarian for Researcher and Collections Services

From the Library of Congress: The Library of Congress announced today the appointment of Hannah Sommers as the new Associate Librarian for Researcher and Collections Services in the Library Collections and Services Group. In this role, Sommers will lead the future of the Library’s collections and the services it delivers to researchers and users. She will be central ...

Virginia Tech: University Libraries Dean Tyler Walters Appointed Board Chair of Academic Preservation Trust; IEEE Computer Society 2023...

As Book Bans Increase Across the Country, a Boston University Scholar is Fighting Back Core’s Library Resources & Technical Services Journal Goes Fully Open Access Digital Image Processing: It’s All ...

Funding: Library Freedom Project Receives $1 Million Grant Award From the Mellon Foundation to Advance Critical Privacy and...

Here’s the Full Text of the Library Freedom Project (LFP) Announcement:   Library Freedom Project (LFP) has been awarded $1,000,000 from the Mellon Foundation to expand the program’s work. For ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.