朝日新聞公開相片資料庫

Recently Asahi News reported the following:

朝日新聞社は２７日から、インターネットで写真を検索・注文できる写真データベース「朝日新聞フォトアーカイブ」（http://photoarchives.asahi.com/）を公開する。
　朝日新聞フォトアーカイブは、戦前・戦中の貴重な歴史写真や、夏の高校野球のすべての大会、現代の地球規模の環境変動をとらえた写真など幅広く画像を網羅。公開当初は約２０万枚でスタートし、今後も本社が所蔵する写真のデジタル化を進め、年度内には１００万枚を超える日本最大の写真データベースを目指す。 今回は法人・企業が対象。ユーザー登録すると、明治から現在までの写真の中から欲しい写真を検索し、電子データを有料でダウンロードできる。個人向けには７月ごろに、登録なしでも写真を閲覧し、プリント注文できるようにする。

Starting from the 27th Asahi Shimbun would make public its photograph data base "Asahi Shimbun photo archive" (http://photoarchives.asahi.com/) that would enable the retrieval and ordering of photographs on the Internet.

The Asahi Shimbun photo archive included a wide range of valuable historical photographs from prewar days to during war, from high school summer baseball tournaments to modern global scale environmental changes. At first as a start about 200,000 photos would be open to the public, and along with the progress in digitalizing its photographs in the headquarters, it aimed at becoming the biggest photograph data base in Japan that would have over one million photos within this fiscal year. At this moment, corporations and enterprises would be the targeted users. After registration and paying a fee users could retrieve the desired photograph, and download the electronic data of that photograph which was taken from the Meiji era to the present. In around July, without registration individuals could inspect photos and order the prints.

I believe as more and more valuable photos are made available to the public, publishers may produce some photo albums on the basis of these photos.