Libology Blog

About 2 million images from the LIFE Photo Archive have been digitized and are available via Google Image Search.  What is even better is that, over the next few months, the remaining 8 million images from the collection will be added.  Many of these have never been published, so there ought to be some historically interesting and significant gems in this collection.

You can search the collection by using the above link, or add “source:life” (without the quotes) to your image search query.

via the Official Google Blog

In a brief essay titled Orphan Works:  A Rant, posted on ©ollecanea, Kenny Crews presents an interestingly common example of how a common encounter results in an orphan work.

“…I kindly handed the camera to a total stranger, requesting a photo of the whole gang. The stranger complied, took a picture, and handed that camera back to me. I might own the camera and stored image, but the tourist who just drifted back to Iowa composed the picture and evidently under the law owns the copyright.”

It is extremely unlikely to become an issue for those of us who are on either side of the camera in this situation, but the potential is there.  An absolute stickler for copyright would need to have a release form handy, or limit their use of the photo to that allowed under the fair use section.

Now we understand that these situations reflect a favor without any expectation of payment, but it is interesting that in the current legal environment we would need to recognize these possibilities.  What if it were to turn out that one of the people was (or is about to become) famous, and the photograph is later featured on the cover of a national magazine?  Then the photographer might become interested in the fine points of copyright law.

Go to WorldCat and type in a search.  The results contain books, video, audio, you name it.  One of the more recent additions is the Digital Images Collections, which can be wonderful to view.  How to find them, though?

Type in your search terms, then add cntnt (”Content” without the vowels) as an additional term (which acts as a limit).  Viola!

Try chicago cubs cntnt

Try airplanes cntnt

Try carnegie libraries cntnt

You get the idea…

found via the WorldCat blog

Wired.com has a great set of photographs detailing the process that goes into scanning books for the Internet Archive’s text  project.

The process isn’t what I envisioned… I expected something that would look like it came from the radiology department of your local hospital rather than that relatively normal Canon EOS SLR digital cameras.  Of course, to gain a bit of perspective, one needs to see just how upscale these cameras are

• Canon EOS 1D
• Canon EOS 5D

found via HangingTogether.org

This is one of those stories that just makes one feel sick to your stomach… the Detroit Public Schools simply abandoned a book depository sometime in the mid 1980s.  Twenty years, several fires, and a great deal of weather exposure has reduced the warehouse of books, flashcards and other school resources to mold, mushrooms, and some sad but fascinating pictures:

• Sweet Juniper blog post
• Flickr photoset

found via LISNews