1) has deleted the Internet Archive Book Images account, effectively removing 5,249,938 searchable book images from every single gallery they were part of, destroying all the added data from comments and tagging done by users over many years.
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2) The reasoning seems to be that The Commons is mostly intended for photos, so the book scans didn't really belong, and the account wasn't being maintained: flickr.com/help/forum/721 No warning appears to have been given and there doesn't seem to be a backup of the data available.
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3) The sheer immensity of this loss of data is devastating, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. To my knowledge, there is now no way to search for individual images from the hundreds of thousands of books at archive.org.
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4) Combined with the loss of the user-generated metadata, this is just heartbreaking. & , did you hear about this yet? Could you maybe help shine a light on the issue? I'm hoping there's some tiny chance the data can be saved if swift action is taken.
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5) Since has stated that The Commons is primarily for photos, what's going to happen to the account, which houses 319,000 searchable flora and fauna ILLUSTRATIONS? Will that get deleted, too?
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Biodiversity Heritage Library
Explore Biodiversity Heritage Library’s 319,588 photos on Flickr!
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7) , are there any plans for some sort of substitution service at your end? Did you manage to back up the user-generated metadata before the deletion? How will people search for individual images inside the book collection now?
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8) RIP Internet Archive Book Images. What a mindless loss. Only hope something can be done to save the data, and some sort of new service can take your place. #savetheinternetarchivebookimages
Gone: flickr.com/photos/interne
Info: flickr.com/help/forum/721
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9) what about the British Library account, also in The Commons? 1,073,000+ images, also mostly illustrations. Will their account be deleted, too? have contacted you about the future prospects for your account? #pleasebackup
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British Library
Explore British Library’s 1,073,492 photos on Flickr!
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10) At least some of the metadata is preserved at (drumroll please) The Wayback Machine at web.archive.org. If you happen to have a link to an image on the now-defunct Internet Archive Book Images account at , you can test the URL there and see what's available.
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11) As an example, this image is no longer on :
flickr.com/photos/interne
But it's available through web.archive.org:
web.archive.org/web/2016070809
Not in high resolution, but the all-important metadata is there, meaning you can figure out which book it was from.
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12) Sadly, this does not seem to be a viable technique for reconstructing user gallaries that contained images from the IABI account. At least with the few cases I tested, neither nor Google Cache has copies of user galleries 
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13) Also, further testing reveals that the results for Wayback recovery are very hit-and-miss. Many of the links I have saved are not available through Wayback, meaning the data is probably lost.
#savetheinternetarchivebookimages
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14) Having been aware of the loss of the Internet Archive Book Images account for a few days now, and having been through my bookmark archives, I'm still completely gutted. Every single image in every single user created album/collection, gone, with no way to know what was lost.
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15) There were so many amazing curated albums based mainly or exclusively on content from the #internetarchivebookimages, and they're just empty now. All the images in people's Favourites albums, missing. Such a huge volume of hard work from so many people, invalidated.
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16) Because of the nature of these galleries, most users probably haven't noticed that anything has happened, yet. How often do you check to see if your bookmarks are all still there? That's pretty much the nature of those albums; they're public bookmarks of curated content.
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17) My only consolation right now is that says they're in talks with about options, and that restoring the account is technically possible: flickr.com/help/forum/en-
That, and I know some big voices are getting ready to fight back 
#savethebookimages
#savethebookimages2
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18) If we do manage to save the account, I only hope that all the user galleries are restored to their former glory as well. And I'll be right there helping with backup efforts. And trying to figure out how to get the remaining 11 million images from the original project online.
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19) Adam Green and his team just published this fantastic post on their blog earlier today: publicdomainreview.org/blog/2022/04/5
As one of the most important voices on historic art and literature in the public domain today, I can't imagine a better champion for this cause.
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20) Please consider signing the open letter addressed to and , asking them to reinstate the #internetarchivebookimages account and its related metadata: openletter.earth/open-letter-to
I'm very hopeful that we'll have a fighting chance now 
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21) We won, #internetarchivebookimages is getting un-deleted!
CEO writes: twitter.com/DonMacAskill/s
And incoming Flickr Foundation Director (and The Commons creator!) says: flickr.com/help/forum/en-
Thank you fighting this fight!
CEO writes: twitter.com/DonMacAskill/s
And incoming Flickr Foundation Director (and The Commons creator!) says: flickr.com/help/forum/en-
Thank you fighting this fight!Quote Tweet
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Don MacAskill
@DonMacAskill
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Replying to @DonMacAskill @nightgolfer and 2 others
Recommending to IA that they delete it was a mistake. Our problem was that the 5M book images were drowning out the rest of the Commons members. So, we are restoring the account, moving it out of the Commons, and placing the book images under CC0, with IA’s permission and support
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While I have your attention — & , the original goal was to upload 14M images (as per blog.archive.org/2014/08/29/mil), but the project halted (funding?).
You just saved the 5M, how do you feel about getting the remaining 9M up there? 
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Do you mind if I threadroll these comments, or do you have a blog or other media you'd prefer I reference?
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Doesn't surprise me at all. Trusted third-parties are security holes.
It's a private profit driven company. I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier.
They should have given some warning.
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Were any of those images also hosted by torrents? I know they do that for video. If so, I wonder if those torrents could be used to reconstruct that data somewhere else.
The thread says repeatedly it was agreed with and done by the internet archive themselves. flickr.com/help/forum/721
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To be clear, Flickr didn't delete this. Our friends at the Internet Archive did. It's their account. I don't know all the details, but I believe we've been collaborating with IA on ways to improve the Commons, and I think removing the Books account was part of that effort.
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We love the Internet Archive and the Commons, and we thought (and I believe IA agreed) that this would be best for both. Based on feedback from the community, such as yours, we may have been wrong. I know we're working with IA right now on options based on that feedback.
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I just borrowed a Gardening book from the IA last week. I wonder if it still on my Kindle? 
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IA books aren't affected, this is just for images from books that were available on Flickr.
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Oh my god this is horrendous. Were any added to / etc? A vain hope that some were saved...
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Just another warning to never rely on third party data storage facilities.
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