Website of the Week

Internet Archive Book Images

The Flickr Commons is a collection of images with no known copyright restrictions, and it is always growing. In this latest addition, it is in the process of adding, “over 14 million images from 2 million Internet Archive public domain eBooks that span over 5 centuries of content, … spanning nearly every topic imaginable. Each image includes detailed descriptions, including the subject tags of the book it came from and the text immediately surrounding it on the page. Perhaps what is most remarkable about this collection is that […] we are suddenly able to view the world’s books not as merely piles of text, but as individualized galleries of one of the richest and most diverse museums of imagery in the world.” (flickr blog, 8/29/14)

Here are some fun search examples from the blog announcement.

“Searching for love yields a myriad images of cherubs and courtship, while mortis (death) offers a glimpse into the early modern period’s fascination with the subject. A search for bird offers a vividly colorful showcase of the world’s bird species, while searching for telephone traces the invention’s history from its introduction as an electric novelty to its widespread adoption.”