It looks like a lot of this stuff is already in the public domain and so they are just letting people use the scans/photos of these works that they took and are hosting. It's a shame that we don't already have this being done by public libraries.
What makes you say that? It's already done by so many institutions within the GLAM sector. They usually don't have the same marketing budget as Getty though. Here's[1] a glimpse into the digital heritage of the EU. That's a good starting point for some exploration.
Download link is a dead dropbox account. And this is the first thing I tried.
I entered "dog" as search term and each and every item I clicked on, that had a Download option, worked fantastically well: https://www.europeana.eu/en/search?page=1&view=grid&query=do...
Taxpayer money well spent indeed!
https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/08547/Museu_ProvidedCHO_Sta...
The image is only 600x768 pixels. Way too small to be useful. You can't even read the text in the image. The original work is 30x42 cm.
There are lots of possible obstacles to showing high resolution digitizations.
Except we do.
NDL Digital Collections: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/
NDL Image Bank: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank
If you view items in the image bank, they show you a preview. You'll then have to click the link that takes you to the digital collections page for that item (which shows the full uncropped image). From there you will want to scroll down to the download panel and make sure you select "high resolution". Those images are generally at least around 2k x 2k or better depending on when they were captured.
You should also be able to get the unconverted image from their api (as many of them are in varying, less common formats like JP2/JPEG2000) but I haven't been able to figure out how. If you sent someone at the library an email you could probably figure it out though.
And 88k images is tiny when we consider that LAION has billions of entries.
don't dismiss the value in simply making them accessible. they're providing a platform to access these works, which is great.
ADHD fail on my part! I even skimmed the article and totally didn't even parse that basic bit of context. Considering that Getty Images (originally photodisc) didn't appear until the early 90s, I'd love to see this turn into a Worldwide Wildlife Federation/Wordwide Wrestling Federation thing.
It being a museum makes it a lot more compelling though. Great job Getty!
>The sad part is that the Getty gets to do these kinds of things only because it's one of the best endowed institutions on the planet with funding to pay researchers/archivists/developers to do this work
And even within those institutions there's still more work than could feasibly be done. I worked in one of the best-funded, if not the best-funded non-governmental library systems on the planet and they've got an order of magnitude more things that need to be digitized than what they've already done, and they do a LOT already.
The compilation of that collection is obviously more considerable. Archivists at Getty have already said it is about 10 years work for ~20 people.
I wasn't talking about the software development side, and I certainly wouldn't call the tech end of this a significant part of the 'intellectual work.' Organizing and managing 88k images is something my laptop 10 years ago wouldn't balk at, serving them is something a low-tier vps could do, and supporting CRUD apps for the archivists, etc are usually trivial. I think you're massively underestimating the importance of other people's tasks in these operations. Even as a developer, the people-focused work-- e.g. working with the other teams to strategize about how tech could best suit their processes, training, design iterations, etc.-- was more work than any technical component.
Read more here: https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/
Chapter 300 covers copyrightability in general: https://copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-auth...
> 313.4(A): A work that is a mere copy of another work of authorship is not copyrightable. The Office cannot register a work that has been merely copied from another work of authorship without any additional original authorship. [...] Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 195 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) ("exact photographic copies of public domain works of art would not be copyrightable under United States law because they are not original").
Chapter 900 covers visual art specifically and goes into more detail on the copyrightability of photographs: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf
> 909.3(A): [...] A photograph that is merely a "slavish copy" of a painting, drawing, or other public domain or copyrighted work is not eligible for registration. The registration specialist will refuse a claim if it is clear that the photographer merely used the camera to copy the source work without adding any creative expression to the photo. Similarly, merely scanning and digitizing existing works does not contain a sufficient amount of creativity to warrant copyright protection.
Faithful reproductions of non-copyrighted two-dimensional work are considered non-copyrightable, because nothing of artistic value is added in the process. (There is a lot of mechanical work around photos, but mechanical work doesn't enjoy copyright.)
Museums like to pretend that they hold copyrights on these photos. They do not.
(In the US).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....