Internet Archive Book Images via Flickr

Flickr is hosting nearly 3 million images extracted from digitized books at the Internet Archive through programming developed by an academic researcher. The Internet Archive Book Images is an amazing resource and it's all in the public domain.

Source: "Millions of historical images posted to Flickr" by Leo Kelion, BBC News: Technology, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28976849

The Getty opens its public domain art to all

The Getty launched its Open Content Program on August 12, 02013 to make digital versions of its public domain artwork available to all. They went above and beyond, as have some other cultural organizations, by providing "high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size."

I applaud The Getty's decision and hope that many more cultural institutions will follow their example. In British Columbia, the City of Vancouver Archives has a comparable policy to the Getty. I would love to see my former employer, the Royal British Columbia Museum, step onto the open access/open content stage. Perhaps this will happen once the BC Archives, which has been part of the RBCM for a decade, converts its database systems for public access via the new content management system, work on which has been underway for at least five years. Amazingly, the existing BC Archives search system is nearly 20 years old, possibly a world record when it comes to public access Web-based databases.

I've always felt it was wrong for cultural institutions to charge money for the use or licensing of public domain content they were preserving since most if not all these organizations also held full rights to other content or could find other ways to generate revenue.

 For some further information about The Getty's decision, see President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust Jame Cuno's article "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come" in The Getty Iris.

Yale University offers open access to digital images of objects from its collections

Yale University announced on May 10, 02011 that it is offering open access to "digital images of objects in its many collections freely available online. 'In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use,' the university said in its statement. 'The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration.' More than 250,000 images have already been made available in a new online catalog, the university said."

You can access these materials through the university's new search engine with the prosaic name of Cross Collection Discovery, part of its Yale Digital Commons network infrastructure.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, QuickWire, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-yale-u-to-offer-digital-images-of-objects-from-its-collections

VisibleGovernment.ca and the Open Government Data movement in Canada

According to its front page, "VisibleGovernment.ca is a Canadian non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency." Some interesting projects here, along with a blog and wiki.

First international Open Access Week, October 19-23, 02009

The first international Open Access Week celebration was launched on October 19 and ends on October 23, 02009. According to the Web site's About page,

Open Access Week builds on the momentum started by the student-led national day of action in 2007 and carried by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. 2008 organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the PLoS (The Public Library of Science), and Students for FreeCulture welcome new key contributors for 2009: OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); Open Access Directory (OAD); and eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), which will again spearhead events in developing and transitional countries.

Session videos from The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age, Texas A&M University, February 02009

Videos of sessions from The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age, a symposium at Texas A&M University, February 11 to 13, 02009, are available.

Happy belated Open Access Day

The world's first Open Access Day was held on October 14, 02008. OAD was founded by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science.

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