Commons:The National Archives (United Kingdom)
Institution[edit]
The National Archives is the official archive of the UK government and England and Wales, looking after and making available to the public a collection of historical records dating back over 1,000 years.
This Means War[edit]
Thanks to a partnership with Wikimedia UK, the National Archives has been able to digitise and release into the public domain over 350 images from our collection of almost 2,000 original artworks by war artists working for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War. We hope we will eventually be able to release the whole collection.
This project aims to make the best possible use of these images across Wikimedia projects and ultimately to link The National Archives' catalogue back to definitive information on Commons. We have done some very basic categorisation of these images but we know very little about some of the artists and many of the works are anonymous.
The images can all be found in this category
Some ways you might help:
- Portraits - Some of the works are portraits of individuals whose Wikipedia articles contain no images whatsoever (e.g. Arthur Barratt, Ducan Sandys, Ernest Thurtle, RK Law) or images of poor quality (e.g. Stafford Cripps) which artworks might replace.
- Artists - As 20th century artists, many of the individuals featured in the collection have no examples of their works on Wikipedia. Examples include Frank Wootton, Laura Knight, Terence Cuneo, Frank Newbould or Victor Weisz. These could now be represented.
- Produce new articles on obscure or unknown artists and illustrate them. We have virtually no personal information at all about some of the key artists in the collection (e.g.Harold Forster, William Little) and some are known only by signatures such as "Nunney" or "Stephen". Can you help us find out more about them? A list of images with unknown artists can be found at /unknown artists.
- How's your Chinese? Can you translate the text on this image? How about this one?
Done & Done by User:Wing. Regards, Peter Weis (talk) 10:42, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
- Any other ideas for collaboration? Join in the discussion on the category's talk page on Commons
TNA caveat[edit]
A note on TNA's website [1] says:
Images from the collections of The National Archives posted on Wikimedia may also be downloaded and reused without permission in any format for purposes of research, private study or education (non-commercial use) only.
and another on the same page:
Images from the collections of The National Archives posted on ... Wikimedia are for non-commercial use only.
The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain".
These photographic reproductions are therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details.
Media coverage[edit]
- TNA press release 2012-06-13
- Related article in The Guardian 2012-06-13
- Culture 24 article, 2012-06-13
- Article in the Sydney Morning Herald 2012-06-15
- Article in The Sun 2012-06-15
- Online gallery on the Telegraph website 2012-06-18
- Online gallery from BBC History Magazine 2012-07-09