Digital Collections - Pictures - Campbell, Marrianne Collinson, 1827-1903

I came across this lovely book whose images are reproduced by the National Library of Australia for its Digital Picture Collection: Wildflowers, Fruit and Butterflies of Australia.

This is one the first collections I have found that is well-documented, at least with respect to the original images, which were watercolors pasted into the book. The Library is apparently digitizing its entire image collection, so there is no information about why this particular book of images has been digitized. On the other hand, there is nothing about the digitized image other than the properties information available when one "right-clicks" on the image. The sizes available are not very large, not large enough to see any detail in the watercolor.

In fact, one other thing that seems off-putting, at least to me, is that the images are made available for research and study but any other use requires permission. The author/artist died in1903, Australia's term is life of the author plus 50 or 50 years from date of publication or making, so there's no chance that the book is still protected by copyright. But it's Australia, so maybe they consider a digital image of a 2D work in the public domain to have a new copyright. Their copyright page doesn't say this explicitly, but it is strongly implied. Still, I would have hoped for more from a library.

This book is one "collection" of watercolors among many other groups of images in the Digital Pictures Collection. The site includes search capabilities across not only this collection, and the entire Picture Collection, but across the entire Digital Library. It's also possible to browse the images. The "about" page explains the site's functional capabilities.