Dear All,

I'm contacting you about an initiative regarding extinct animals and
cultural heritage. The past few weeks I was looking for unknown 19th
century photos of the extinct passenger pigeon to help a research project.
While looking for the photos, I realised that even the existing images are
not really available to the public even though they are in public domain.
There is not only no central place to find all the photos but the various
holding archives are not providing high quality and freely usable photos.
This concerns not only PP photos but actually all photos about extinct
animals are difficult to access (and this is a general problem with
historical photos).

This inspired me to write a manifesto addressing cultural institutions to
release public domain photos for the public. It also contains a suggestion
that the best way to do this is by using Wikimedia Commons. You can read
the text here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1odIjnw3jbuTXYoOChroFIi0cEp4W3Hrdfu3xhY89fRc/edit?usp=sharing

What do you think? Would you like to "join" the manifesto by signing it?
I'm still inviting more professionals to participate and I'm planning on
some kind of a decentralised publication so it could appear on multiple
sites at the same time to reach a wide audience working in related areas.
If you know others whom you think would be interested in signing, feel free
to forward my email or just send their contacts to me.

Best wishes,
Adam Harangozó


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