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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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Don MacAskill

@DonMacAskill

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.

Don MacAskill

@DonMacAskill

UPDATE #1: I told you I didn't know all the details. 🤦‍♂️

Flickr did recommend this course of action to the Internet Archive, which they took. This was primarily our mistake. I'll have an update on the new course of action shortly. Stay tuned.

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Brewster Kahle

@brewster_kahle

· 8h

Replying to @PublicDomainRev @Flickr and @internetarchive

The @internetarchive did not ask to take these off of Flickr's site. We do not have any power of them-- it is up to them. The Images are still in the books that are hosted on Archive.org But I understand Flickr is interested in putting them back up.

Replying to

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

5:31 PM · Apr 4, 2022Twitter Web App

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This is fantastic news!

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and

Thank you Don &

! I personally think moving IABI out of #thecommons is a fine compromise, and understand the argument that it was clogging the search results. Can we expect all galleries containing IABI images to be restored as well?

Jonas Lönborg

@nightgolfer

To add to this, I completely agree with

@PublicDomainRev

that keeping #internetarchivebookimages within The Commons and building a (default on?) filter would be preferable, but honestly, I'll take what I can get at this point

Replying to

Thanks for your response Don. That's fantastic news! Have you considered reinstating into Flickr Commons but having the IA images only included in searches with the checking of a filter, so they were only seen by those who chose to see them?

Public Domain Review

@PublicDomainRev

It would suffer from being siloed from other Commons accounts — that was one of the big strengths, that you could browse contributions from

@internetarchive

's account alongside offerings from

@BioDivLibrary

@britishlibrary

, @LibraryofCongress, etc.

publicdomainreview.org

5.2 Million Book Illustrations Deleted from Flickr — Help Get Them Back

Learn about the deletion of a huge archive of book illustrations and sign an open letter to save it.

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Replying to

FANFREAKINGTASTIC.

Replying to

When I began reading this thread I wondered if I might, by the end of it, give up on my plan of resuming use of my old Flickr account again. Nice to have the tweet above render that thought void.