I was just about to respond with this :-)
I discussed this with the BL team a few weeks before the release, and while we could sort out the technical issues of a million items fairly easily, it looked like the lack of metadata would make them very unsuited for Commons.
There's nothing stopping us harvesting them individually, of course, but I think adding a million unidentified images and saying "the community will sort them out" would be a very quick road to my getting beaten up ;-)
Andrew.
On 15 December 2013 17:37, Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de wrote:
Just discovered a short note of Andrew Gray, why Flickr was preferred instead of Commons. http://www.generalist.org.uk/blog/2013/mechanical-curator-on-commons/
2013/12/15 Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de
Thanks for the news.
A question comes to my mind when I read this article: Why did the British Library use Flickr instead of Wikimedia Commons? Maybe it has to do something with a better usability of Flickr? -
The usability of Wikimedia Commons most be increased to make it more attractive to individual and institutional users. Don't you think so?
The next steps mentioned in the article indicates good opportunities for us to get involved and show the potential of an experienced platform for crowdsourcing information and knowledge:
"We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these 'unseen illustrations'. and furtheron in the blogpost, "We plan to launch a crowdsourcing application at the beginning of next year, to help describe what the images portray. Our intention is to use this data to train automated classifiers that will run against the whole of the content."
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-fi...
Best regards,
Jens
2013/12/15 Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada emijrp@gmail.com
Quote from full announcement
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-fi...
We have released over a million imageshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibraryonto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images
were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsofthttp://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-19th-Century-Book-Digitisation-Project-343.aspxwho 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.
Flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary Example of image http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11307195524/ Example of all images from a book http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/tags/sysnum002660292 Stuff for coders https://github.com/BL-Labs/imagedirectory
So... :-) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
Jens Best Präsidium Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. web: http://www.wikimedia.de mail: jens.best@wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
--
Jens Best Präsidium Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. web: http://www.wikimedia.de mail: jens.best@wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l