Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, March 05, 2009

New OA collection of polar exploration images

JISC, 20,000 photos from 150 years of polar exploration available online, press release, March 4, 2009. (Thanks to Jonathan Gray.)

Over 20,000 images capturing over 150 years of polar exploration have been made accessible online by the Scott Polar Research Institute, thanks to a digitisation programme funded by JISC.

As part of the preservation programme, negatives, daguerreotypes and lantern slides, which form part of a rich but fragile archive held by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, will be made available to scientists, researchers, scholars and members of the public.

From today, anyone interested in the 19th century exploration of the Arctic and the Antarctic expeditions of Captain Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton and their modern counterparts such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes can simply visit the Freeze Frame site.

As well as being able to view a range of images, including Herbert Ponting’s glass plate negatives from the 1910-13 British Antarctic Expedition, that are so fragile they will never be on public display, visitors to the website will also be able to read extracts from diaries, expedition reports, letters and other personal papers of expedition members. ...