Google and LIFE
Posted by Diane Zoellmer on December 16th, 2008
In line with their mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, Google has partnered with LIFE to offer an online photo gallery as part of its image search function. Starting with about 2 million images, Google plans to add to the gallery to eventually include all 10 million images from the LIFE magazine photo library. The majority of the images (according to LIFE – 95%) taken from the 1750s to today have never been published or seen by the public. The collection can be searched using key words and browsed by decade or category to see works such as the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; The Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen.
Teachers are able to use in these images in face-to-face classroom instruction and student projects as long as they don’t republish that material online (or sell it, or anything else that falls outside of the boundaries of fair use). In their blog, Google states that users are able to print the images for personal use although there is a LIFE watermark on each image. There is also a link for each image for ordering prints.
Users can find the LIFE images within the Google image window or click here to go to the Google/LIFE web site.