One Million Images Released by British Library in Collective Effort to Improve Data & Depiction

Our medium of choice might be language, for the most part, but we can't deny the power of a million+ images now in the public domain. Open Culture points us to the British Library announce that these are for "anyone to use, remix and repurpose."

These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain.

The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.

But that's not all: "We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these 'unseen illustrations,'" goes the release.

The images were plucked from the pages as part of the 'Mechanical Curator', a creation of the British Library Labs project. Each image is individually addressible, online, and Flickr provies an API to access it and the image's associated description.

We may know which book, volume and page an image was drawn from, but we know nothing about a given image.

With this, the library hopes to collaborate "with researchers and anyone else with a good idea for how to markup, classify and explore this set with an aim to improve the data and to improve and add to the tagging."
"We are very interested to hear what ideas and projects people use these images for and we would ideally like to collaborate with those who have been inspired to explore them."

Find contact info, browse the images, and find plenty of examples at the British Library. At top: "Image taken from page 582 of 'The United States of America. A study of the American Commonwealth, its natural resources, people, industries, manufactures, commerce, and its work in literature, science, education and self-government. [By various authors.]"