12 Million Historic Photos Scanned to Web

Snosty writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that British Pathe, a cinema news service dating to the 19th century, has scanned one image for every second of their 3500 hours of 35mm film. That makes for 12 million images covering everything from the Boer War to the Beatles available on their web site!"

Comments

Yes

[3.5 stripes]

But you have to purchase them.

I saw the site yesterday. Nice resource.

Re:Quick thinking

[Hieronymus Howard]

The site's been suffering from the 'slashdot effect' since yesterday when the BBC and various other news sites announced it. Slashdot is a day behind everyone else with this story. I tried it a few hours ago and couldn't reach it then. No chance now.

HH

Uhh, not quite...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Uhh, no, not quite accurate. I tried looking at the archive after reading this story on the BBC yesterday. It was down then, so I'm not surprised it's still down now. More a case of BBCed than slashdotted.

Give them a few days to realise that their press releases were a bit more effective than they originally anticipated and I'm sure that the site will be alright.

Will we feel the wrath when...

[DMCBOSTON]

...the /. 'ers remember who bought the Bettmann Archive?
According to the article, "Peter Fydler, archive marketing director at..." which implies they WILL sell it, probably commercially to news organizations or whatever (think History Channel)seems balanced by "By using the newsreel archive to create a huge collection of still images, people can have access free of charge to printable pictures, which will add to their enjoyment of history," he said.
So it seems that this archive will be freely available for non-commercial and research use.

Re:Archives of historic/public-domain images?

[abevilac]

The Library of Congress has a long term project called "American Memory" which collects images in American history though some are copyrighted others are public domain. http://memory.loc.gov/

From the site:

[RenderMonkey]

"Now you are here you can preview items from the entire 3500 hour British Pathe Film Archive which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970.

"You can also license higher resolution copies of the same items for PowerPoint Presentations and Web Publishing, or simply buy a still from the item for private use.

"Requests for other rights or formats should be addressed to archive.sales@itn.co.uk Just type in what you are looking for above and within minutes you could own a little piece of history!"

Their FAQ sortof addresses the allowable uses of the previews:

"What am I allowed to do with my free Preview Files?

"They were made available on-line principally as an educational resource. We hope that they will stimulate an interest in modern history amongst younger people, and help older generations to understand the 20th century in a broader context.

"We encourage users to share Preview Files that they download with colleagues and friends around the world via e-mail. We would ask that this is not achieved by publishing Preview Files on-line. The only instance where we feel this might be appropriate is within a closed user group in an educational environment.

"Above all we would like users to enjoy discovering the past through our wonderful archive, and would hope that in return the images downloaded are not misused in any way."

Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.

On the site that handles sales of British Pathe assets they specifically state that:

"The British Pathe archive is perhaps the world's most famous newsreel collection. Spanning the period 1896-1970, the collection comprises 3,500 hours and contains some of the most iconic images ever caught on camera. The entire archive has been remastered and fully digitised. It is now possible to view every second of this outstanding collection online through this web site and there is absolutely no charge for this facility.

"Unfortunately, British Pathe material is not available for license to companies based in North America or other NTSC territories."

Of course that is for the actual footage, no help with licensing for the still images though. A great archive and it will be an excellent resource for many. Hopefully they can clarify the use of the preview still images though.