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The New York Times Digitizes Millions of Photos Going Back To 19th Century (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

The New York Times is digitizing millions of historical photos dating back to 1896. From a report: The NYT has a massive collection of photos dating back decades, and the plan is to digitize millions of images -- some dating back to the late nineteenth century -- to ensure they can be accessed by generations to come. The digitization process will also prove useful for journalists who will be able to delve into the archives far more easily in future. Until now, historic news articles and photos have been stored on microfilm and in other physical forms. This is not only difficult to catalog and navigate, but also prone to deterioration over time and through use. The newspaper is using Google Cloud for the digitization.

4 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Highlander by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    This will come in handy for catching time-travelers and immortals.

  2. What brand of hard drive did they use? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    > The newspaper is using Google Cloud for the digitization.

    But what I would like to know is what brand of hard drive the images are stored on. Also the favorite coffee brand of the main developer.

    Who on earth is interested in what cloud provider they used except for Google's marketing department?

  3. The real question is by bobstreo · · Score: 2

    how many of the images are considered to be in public domain?

    Just because you digitize something doesn't mean you own the rights to the image.

    Sounds like a combination of cash grab and physical space savings.

    Hope they're using a lossless/high res algorithm to preserve the images.

    1. Re:The real question is by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's their own collection of images from their archive of previous articles. There's no issue of copyright unless they distribute the images in a new way that's not covered in contracts.