[Wikimedia-l] [Commons-l] The British Library releases 1 million images

[Andrew Gray]

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 at 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 at 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-first-steps.html
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Jens
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2013/12/15 Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada <emijrp at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Quote from full announcement
>>>
>>> http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html
>>>
>>> We have released over a million
>>> images<http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary>onto 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
>>> > Microsoft<http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/The-British-Library-19th-Century-Book-Digitisation-Project-343.aspx>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.
>>>
>>>
>>> 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... :-)
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>> Jens Best
>> Präsidium
>> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
>> web: http://www.wikimedia.de
>> mail: jens.best at 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 at 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 at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>



-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk