Newswatch

News from the industry, fresh from the oven

The British Museum has announced the availability of free online digitised images of its varied collection. This so called ‘revamped’ online collections database contains 1.9 million images offered to the public under the restrictive Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, allowing non-commercial use with attribution.

According to reports, the Museum team has expedited the release of this online database to enable public access to the museum’s collections while in quarantine at home.

The public users are no longer required to register in order to use the images which can now be accessed and downloaded by anyone for noncommercial use with attribution.

According to reports, the collection features two million years’ worth of history spanning over six continents. The museum has digitised around 4.5 million objects, making it the largest online collection of its kind. The museum’s revamped interface not only provides free access to these images but also makes it easier to find the specific items they are looking for. The online collection includes everything from ancient Egyptian sculptures to Assyrian artefacts, Greek objects, Iranian jewellery, Roman Empire artworks etc. Viewers can sort through the content and search images using museum numbers, names of people, places and keywords. The launch is a welcomed addition to the growing body of digitised artefacts and other works made available to the general public online such as The Smithsonian and Paris Musées, both of which have released their online collections with Creative Commons 0 licenses.