I noticed via a post at Lifehacker today that Google is hosting the entire LIFE magazine photography archive. As Google’s announcement indicates, this doesn’t include just published images; it includes any and all images which can be digitized; currently, they have about 20% of the 10 million image library scanned and online:

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.

Whether browsing from the LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google start page or doing a search from Google by adding “source:LIFE” to the search, it’s an amazing resource and collection with only 20% currently available.  I’m not sure where else we might find images like this one.

What baffles me about the announcement and the resource home page is that there’s absolutely zero mention of copyright or license or permissions to use the content.  Given that there’s nothing posted, the assumption is that the entire library is (C) All Rights Reserved, and of course, that doesn’t mean that the content can’t be used in the classroom.  But, I’m surprised that there’s not at least some explicit indication of the license of the images.  And, it’s discouraging that such a collectoin isn’t being made available via a more lenient and usable Creative Commons license: attribution-noncommercial-noderivative, perhaps?

Maybe that’s an educator’s perspective, and just maybe, I’m asking and expecting too much.  Oh well.

Related posts:

1. Lego Digital Designer
2. Google Friend Connect @ Edtechatouille
3. Live Blogging @ Educause SW Regional
4. Discourse: "Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants"

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: all_disciplines, education, google, resources, technology