Tagged for OEG Connect: Public Domain Image Archive from the Public Domain Review

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What’s of interest? Public Domain Image Archive from the Public Domain Review

Tell me more!

Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

Where is it?: https://pdimagearchive.org/

This is one among many items I will regularly tag in Pinboard as oegconnect, and automatically post tagged as #OEGConnect to Mastodon. Do you know of something else we should share like this? Just reply below and we will check it out.

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We are well into the riches that entered the commons as part of Public Domain Day January 1, 2024- see Duke University Center for the Public Domain as well as the post from the Public Domain Review.

The latter organization is responsible or should be credited for this new curated collection of 10,000+ images as the Public Domain Image Archive.

Yes, you can search and browse by categories, but I often like the randomness of browsing, like wandering in the shelves of a bookstore or library, which is what you can do with this collection’s Infinite View. You enter to a random set of images, and you can scroll in any direction for what does feel like infinity.

A grid of various style old style images, drawing, posters, paintings of horse drawn carts, snow flakes, in the center a set of marine animal skeletons, all of them public domain images navigated by scrolling infinitely
A grid of various style old style images, drawing, posters, paintings of horse drawn carts, snow flakes, in the center a set of marine animal skeletons, all of them public domain images navigated by scrolling infinitely1920×1199 267 KB

Then it’s a matter of following your curioisty. I landed on the image in the middle which looked a bit like sea shells. It is in in fact a lithograph image “Plate 90, Cystoidea” (1904) by Ernst Haeckel

The remarkable details and geometric patterns in the drawings are what caught my eye. This immediately reminded me of the book I got as a Geology student, On Growth and Form by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, which I remember the author demonstrating again and again how life forms like these follow mathematic equations in their life form.

Take a spin in the Public Domain Image Archive’s Infinite View, and share what jumps out to you, and what connections or curiosities it generates for you.

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Hi Alan
Your post reminded me of Dover Books. I haven’t thought of them in years. I used to buy Haeckel’s illustrations, among other public domain books, in used books stores fifty years ago. A search shows they are still in business and republishing works from the public domain, including books with CDs of clip art!
I love the Public Domain Review and rely on them for an amazing array of images, just like Dover Books did all those years ago.
Mark

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Is that Dover Publications? I was thinking you were describing a local book store. Where is/was it?