h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The next in my series of free online sites you probably never wanted to know about is Europeana.

http://www.europeana.eu/

Brainchild of Jaques Chirac and co-funded by the European Union, it's a portal giving access to millions of books, images, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. It's contibuted to by over 2000 institutions, including national libraries and art galleries.

Now, with such a huge collection on offer, it's actually quite difficult for me to give recommendations. It's simply full of weird stuff. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of it, but here are a couple of examples:

Pictures of Johnny Hackett at the Batley Variety Club, care of the Kirklees Image Archive: http://www.kirkleesimages.org.uk/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;k018942&pos=2&action=zoom

Video of a Czech children's camp from 1923: http://film.nfa.cz/portal/avrecord/0063210

Dutch concert bill for the Fred Banana Combo: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/2022009/E56B16DFDFD8CC1DCA4E91EE9DB0C8C32E4A6D07.html?start=19&query=what%3Abanana&startPage=13&rows=12

I have a feeling this site will soon become Dmitri's favourite guilty pleasure.


And so I challenge you to find the single weirdest thing in the entire Europeana collection. Remember, Europeans, we've been paying for this!

Yay!

Wow, I'm writing an entry on an obscure little town in the Pyrenees, and I've found 7 entries in the Europeana site for the church alone.

This is wonderful!

Deb

Nah--to be a guilty pleasure, you have to be a bit ashamed of it. I don't Dmitri *has* any shame...

At least when it comes to learning things.

That is good - I didn't have much luck with my first few searches, because it is hard to guess the keywords they use, but now I'm getting into it

I even found a photo of Sandor Vay http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0063703.html

Are some of these images free to use? This could be a gold mine for us!

Is there a list of entries needing pictures

I don't think there's a master list, although the person to ask would be Tavaron.

If you click on a Guide Entry, and you don't see a picture, send 'em one.

The new QotD somehow seems relevant to his thread, Icy.

http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0008510.html

The skeleton of a man riding the skellington of a horse. I may have discovered a candid photo of DEATH. I mean, he seems very pleased with himself.


Regarding photo rights, I found that, if I pursue the link, I would find content saying whether or not the image is copyright.

A one legged skeleton, riding a horse skellington.

I've a spreadsheet giving details of all Edited Entries, and I record things such as whether the entry is hidden by the moderators, will display in Pliny (they all now do, since I fixed them), and has dead links to the BBC Music site (none of the do any longer).

But in looking through every one of the 10,000 entries, I never checked to see which ones have pictures and which don't. I did record the picture details of some of them, but it is far from complete. Finishing it would require another trawl, which would take me about a month's hard work.

That sounds a tough job (shout if you need help),and you deserve all our thanks for doing that .

Has the rule 1 pic per entry been relaxed.

Yes. Quite a few entries now have more than one picture.

Keep the weird stuff coming in

This is my favourite so far. Ever wanted to visit Denmark? Here's a short film from the Danish Film Institute which shows you what you can expect

http://www.filmstriben.dk/bibliotek/film/details.aspx?id=9000000567

I've fallen down a rabbit hole in that site Icy, I've 'liked' it on FB and signed up for the newsletter. I've got about ten browser tabs open too. Now, what is the weirdest? hmmm

Well, I distinctly remember we had this exact chair. The plastic strip started to break and unravel,
http://blackcountryhistory.org/collections/getrecord/WASMG_WASMG___1989_0163/

I could be gone all day browsing, thanks Icy


ps @Bob - please visit U14916409

I just came across another human skeleton riding a horse skeleton. This is apparently on display at the Australian Museum.

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1rev55/i_consider_this_as_the_best_part_of_the/

In the comments there is also a link to an image from a Body Works exhibit with a bit more flesh. http://i.imgur.com/3ZvuMAD.jpg


Just a bit of synchronicity.

I just found this (on reddit) and thought it could be a very useful resource for us.

The British Library has posted over 1 million public domain images online.

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-million-first-steps.html