Open Culture (Official)Aug 19, 2023

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix. ICYMI

https://www.openculture.com/2013/12/british-library-puts-1000000-images-into-public-domain.html

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Earlier this week, Oxford's Bodleian Library announced that it had digitized a 550 year old copy of the Gutenberg Bible along with a number of other ancient bibles, some of them quite beautiful. Not to be outdone, the British Library came out with its own announcement on Thursday:

Open Culture
Show threadlizzzzardAug 20, 2023

@openculture after reading the article, I have questions.

So they say that they let Microsoft scan these books. And Microsoft "generously gifted back" the images, that were then made public domain. Which, according to the press release, is good because we admittedly know little about the images and now the "crowd" can help with that.

Show threadlizzzzardAug 20, 2023

@openculture eh? What happened to the rest of the books? You know, the non-image part, the words? How is the "crowd" supposed to work its magic without a context to the images? Why is Microsoft "generously" keeping the rest of the books to themselves?

I call bullshit on that spindoctorism.

Show threadlizzzzard

@openculture also, this title image creating a shit storm was so obvious, what with the British being criticized for their colonial history for a long time now.

Choosing this image for a title is either extremely insensitive... or is on purpose, to create attention. Both are not good options.

Aug 20, 2023 at 8:22amWeb