Wellcome Library Releases Huge Collection of Images

http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2014/01/wellcome-library-releases-huge-collection-images

Wellcome Library Releases Huge Collection of Images

text, map and illustration of uroscopy. Mid 15th centuryAs part of an increasingly common trend (the British Library did a similar thing at the end of last year) Wellcome Images has released tens of thousands of images from its archive into the public domain.

Islamic map of the world. The north is at the bottom, with the west to the right surrounded by unknown seas. The Indian Ocean, with the Red Sea, is on the left, with China, India and Iran in boxes to the right. The other sea shown is the Mediterranean next to which is a black square indicating Rome and a circle Constantinople. The Nile flows from the Mediterranean to the east and into the north then turn east and head towards a large circle indicating its source in Africa. 18th century

The images, which include early photographs, maps, historical documents and medical manuscripts and other arcana on the history of science, have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, meaning they can be used, remixed and adapted in pretty much any fashion, be it for personal or commercial use.

Manchu bride, Peking, Penchilie province, China. One of the photographs taken by the great Scottish traveller, geographer and photographer John Thomson (1837-1921) in China, Indo-China, Cyprus and Great Britain.

At present the site is running a little slow (we hope this is just an early teething issue) and there isn't much in the way of categorisation, meaning that browsing through the collection isn't a great experience, but the sheer variety of images available more than makes up for these niggling concerns.

Horoscope of Prince Iskandar, grandson of Tamerlane, the Turkman Mongol conqueror. This horoscope shows the positions of the heavens at the moment of Iskandar's birth on 25th April 1384.


http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/page/Home.html