Although Life Magazine shuttered its doors last year, it still held on to a sizable catalog of photos illustrating many landmark events in recent history. Now Life is sharing its archive of 10 million photos with the world via Google Image Search.

Life has basically donated its entire collection of images to the public by allowing Google to host them on its Image Search engine. The photos are freely available to be printed out for non-commercial use. You can also order high-quality framed prints from the collection at Qoop.com.

You can surf the entire gallery by decade or by images of historical figures at http://images.google.com/hosted/life. Alternately, you can search the images from Google’s Image Search feature by including the text, “source:life,” in your query.

So far the online gallery includes approximately 2 million images, about 97 percent of which have never been seen before. By the time Google has uploaded and indexed the entire collection, it will include nearly 10 million photos detailing the last century.

The gallery is organized by decade and begins with images of the US Civil War in the 1860s. It includes photos of US President Abraham Lincoln along with some of his Generals. The 1870s relives the aftermath of the Chicage fires in pictures.

Also available are photos from excursions to exotic locales such as the Himalayas, the Taj Mahal and St Peter’s Square in Russia. These pictures not only capture compelling pictures of the places themselves, but also the people and culture that are indigenous to the areas.

Partnerships such as this one to digitize a part of our American heritage will become increasingly important over time. As images crumble and the world begins to rely on the Web for cultural context, these archives will become increasingly important in maintaining touch with our history.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 10:01 am under Google, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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