Over 180,000 high-resolution files added to New York Public Library collection

 

 

Last week, the New York Public Library added 180,000 digitized items to its Digital Collections.

These out-of-copyright materials are all available in high-resolution downloads for any use. Alongside these new materials, the Digital Collections site itself has seen improvements, including more prominent download links and better filtering options. For the more technically-inclined user, the Digital Collections API has been improved as well.

The Remix Residency program offered by the New York Public Library is now accepting applications for a new program, which is intended for artists, data specialists, and others to utilize the digital collection in new and creative ways. 

As an example of the kind of new ways that people are using the digital collection, check out NYPL Lab's Brian Foo's visualization of the new digital collections, which breaks all of the newly-digitized material down by century created, genre, collection, or color, and allows you to zoom in and click on any of the 187,000 digital documents. You can see more information about Brian Foo here.

 

Screenshot of Brian Foo's visualization tool with the files organized by color.

Bert Spaan of NYPL Labs has created a neat "then and now" remix, which combines images of New York City's Fifth Avenue from 1911 and Google Street View to allow you to see how the city has changed (or in some cases, stayed remarkably the same) over the past 100 years.

 

Screenshot of Bert Spaan's Then & Now remix.

To see more of the tools and also some notable collections from the new items, see the New York Public Library's press release.

It's always fun to explore history and the new photo additions made by the New York Public Library to its Digital Collections make that even easier. So hop in to the collection and start exploring, you never know what you might stumble upon.

 

369th National Guard Regiment (a.k.a. Harlem Hellfighters). This New York-based regiment served in WWI. Image from 1919.

(Seen via The Digital Picture. Index image from 1860-1960 (approximate) of a woman with a shawl and beaded necklace, from the Meville J. and Frances S. Herskovits collection. Harlem Hellfighters portrait from 1919.)