Top Genealogy Websites Update: Internet Archive Book Images + Flickr

Thomas Jay Kemp

10 years ago

Last year I wrote about Internet Archive, spiking it out as one of the top genealogy websites online.

Recently there has been a new development that I wanted to alert you to.

Kalev H. Leetaru, the Yahoo! Fellow in Residence of International Values, Communications Technology, has used his position to mine the old images and photos in the Internet Archive and is putting them on Flickr, making it easy for us to find illustrations and photographs published in books over the last 200 years.

He has uploaded over 2.6 million images from the Internet Archive of old published books and put them online.

Why is this important to genealogists?

This new Flickr search feature lets you quickly find images, etchings, photographs, etc., of your ancestors that were published in books.

Source: Flickr – Internet Archive Book Images

Here’s how it works.

In this example I am searching for illustrations pertaining to the Starbird family.

Looking at the results, I selected the image on the right.

Clicking on the image brings up the details about the book it was originally published in.

This image was published in:

History of Wayne, Pike and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: R. T. Peck & co., 1886. Page 760.

Clicking on the “View Book Page” hyperlink, I can then see the image as it appeared in the original book.

The image is the portrait of Irvin Starbird (1842-1897) of Preston, Wayne County, Pennsylvania. Along with his portrait, I was able to read his biography which contained extensive genealogical details about the family.

The Internet Archive Book Images site has put more than 2.6 million of these old images on Flckr.

If you haven’t already, make sure to check out our “Top Genealogy Websites” post series to learn more about the best online resources for your ancestry research: