The British Library holds a huge collection of pictorial material. Until now, however, pictures have not been easily accessible to researchers, and no subject index has ever been provided. 13,000 of the Library's finest images have now been digitised and mounted on a PC with specially developed retrieval software. Searchable notes fields contain data about each image, and searchers can use hypertext links which give the best possible access to all relevant images. The system shows pictures retrieved by a search in under a second.
Users can then browse screens of thumbnails of images, which can be enlarged as required.
If the searcher wants a copy of the picture, a dye-sublimation print is produced in a couple of minutes. The Library has digitised two major collections of early photographs. The Canadian Copyright material is a collection of photographs of life in turn of the century Canada, with advertisements, pioneer life, and important images of Canadian Indians. The Barlow collection of Victorian psychic photographs features ghostly images and seances, mediums and ectoplasm. Other images are taken from the Library's unique treasures - including the Lindisfarne Gospels , the Diamond Sutra , the Magna Carta , the Sforza Hours , the Tyndale New Testament and the Leonardo da Vinci notebooks .