Where is the largest library in the world?

Photomuse.org, the world's largest free access photo gallery, has been officially launched by two American photo collectors.

The two giants are GeorgeEastmanHouse Photo Library in Rochester and International Photography Center in new york. The cooperation between the two companies began at 1999. George eastman Photo Studio is the oldest photography museum in the world, with 400,000 photos and negatives. The International Photography Center is relatively young and has few collections, but it has a wide range in new york. The two have cooperated in collection and geography, and have jointly held many influential exhibitions in recent years.

Recently, their ambition has expanded. They want to create the world's largest mainstream free photo library, which is open to all photography professionals and enthusiasts. This will allow many photographers to enjoy rich free resources. As soon as this website in Photomuse.org was opened, the server was paralyzed because of too much traffic. According to the plan, by the spring of 2006, the number of pictures on this website will reach 200,000. The two giants are negotiating with many picture copyright owners, and the number of pictures will further increase. More importantly, the pictures on this website will strive to be classic and mainstream, so there are many masterpieces, such as the handed down works of Alfred Stieglitz, Vega and Lewis Hein.

In addition, the search methods of this website will be very rich. For example, lewis hine's photographic works depicting an Italian immigrant couple can be found by terms such as "immigrant", "Italian-American", "Alice Island" and "city life", or by the names of exhibitions in which the pictures have participated, or even by the types of pictures and the types of lenses used for shooting. Many initial pictures will be smaller and will be improved gradually in the future.

Now there are many digital photo libraries on the Internet, such as Corbis and GettyImages, but they are all for commercial purposes and ordinary people can't get in. People compare Photomuse with the large number of digital free collections of the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum and the National Museum of Photography. Now the initial investment budget of this website has reached 800,000 dollars.

However, the plan still faces two main problems. First, a large number of pictures of the two companies are digitized and input into the same computer system. About 140000 pictures of george eastman will be digitized, and 30000 will be digitized in the International Photography Center. This is a huge project; Second, we should continue to negotiate with the copyright owners of too many photographers. A person in charge said: "Some copyright owners are very generous and understand the benefits of this plan; Others are worried about reducing their income and are hesitant. All of us are learning to use the Internet. "