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Library Makes an Unsplash

Posted by: John Sayers

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Hands up on the beach at Atlantic City, N.J. Dry-plate negative by the Detroit Publishing Co., publisher, [between 1900 and 1920]. Prints & Photographs Division.
Today the Library of Congress added another way of sharing some of its timeless collections with new audiences on diverse social media channels. We’ve joined several other cultural institutions to make selected rights-cleared images available on the Unsplash free stock photography website. Founded in 2013, the Unsplash site contains more than 1 million free high-resolution curated photos furnished by a community of more than 150,000 photographers.

In July, the channel launched Unsplash for Education to reach out to the student and teacher community. Several other cultural institutions besides the Library have joined in the effort—from federal agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Geological Service to fellow libraries like the British Library and New York Public Library, to other exhibitions spaces such as Birmingham Museums Trust and Museums Victoria.

Here’s a blog post from Unsplash describing Unsplash for Education and its partnering institutions. And you can visit the Library’s new presence on Unsplash here. In our first day, Unsplash reports that our page received 920,707 views and 2,000 downloads — check it out!

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