UT wins. This is pathetic, and while the intention might be seen as a (minimal, for PR purposes) step in the right direction, it seems Yale cannot afford even one decent digital camera or a cheap slide scanner. I’m so sorry for them, doesn’t look Yale has moved much farther than Glenn mentions. And the UT win is “by default”, since anybody with even my prosumer camera could do better, with access to the treasures they hoard.

The largest I’ve seen is 700×525.

It’s too bad when someone goes to the effort to do this that they can’t make the images available at a higher resolution.

I’m hoping that once the project gets going, higher resolution versions will be made available.

American history has a richer visual heritage than most people know- Yale has been distorting our national understanding of our own heritage by squatting on their holdings like a dragon guarding it’s hoard. I would love to know who is responsible for this wonderful event.

http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/yale-provides-digitized-images-from-special-collections-without-fees/

Also the Yale Art Gallery for example has a fairly restrictive TOS on use of images http://ecatalogue.art.yale.edu/terms.htm section 1 Copyright begins with this statement, The Gallery retains all rights, including copyright, in data, images, software, documentation, text, and other information contained in these files”
Also this TOS has one of those amusing “linking policies”
“The Gallery appreciates your use of the eCatalogue web site and understands that users may wish to link to the web site. The Gallery retains the right to require that you remove such a link, which right shall be exercised in the Gallery’s sole discretion. ”

“4. Legal
We have consulted with the Office of the Vice-President and General Counsel which advises that without the commitment of additional resources to this end, enforcing license restrictions is often infeasible given the costs and resources such enforcement likely require. Moreover, as the legal designation “public domain” is supported by the rationale that eventually all creators and/or owners of content must relinquish their monopolies over such content making such content available for unmitigated access and use, attempts to restrict access through licensing provisions may be neither legally enforceable nor ethically prudent.”

Writers need images in order to drive potential viewers to things which might otherwise seem boring, to the typical fast paced reader. Images are often need to make a point an if they are too large they can actually detract from a blog that might not have the controls that are found in WordPress to reduce the size of an image:

For example, in:

http://socialcauses101.blogspot.com/2011/05/sustainable-forests-bolivias-pioneer.html

I needed an image of the lush vegetation that was discussed in the article, but their image was too small, hoever another image was not accessible due to a transparent layer! Not ever image is either public domain or useable however we who blog are often in a quandary about what image to use, and what not to use.

In this case I probably should have gone with a different image and will do so, if this particular post actually warrants this sort of attention due to the importance of its content.

It would be nice if the people who use these images, could easily other writers, and bloggers know if their image can be used or not. Having a site like this is a huge plus to anyone who likes to include pics with their posts!

http://ecatalogue.art.yale.edu/imageServer/imgSrv?objectId=200&size=full

For this piece, “large” is 377×700 but “full” is 1572×2916.