The Online Galleries of the University of Oklahoma Libraries offer 80,000 high resolution images of plates, engravings, portraits, title pages and maps from the holdings of the History of Science Collections. Images are captured at a quality that is easier to examine than the original page, so turn to the galleries when you are interested in fine detail that repays close scrutiny. Browse these galleries when you need engravings, portraits, maps and illustrations for scholarly examination, or iconic images of pedagogical value for your teaching and presentations. Access the galleries here:
http://hos.ou.edu/galleries/

The metadata-enhanced images are organized for browsing in parallel directories according to (1) period, (2) author and (3) date of publication, as explained here:
https://ouhos.org/2010/06/03/how-to-browse-the-image-galleries/

We will digitize entire books when requested by a collaborating project, when distinctive characteristics of the OU copy of a work warrant its digitization, or when the work contains a large number of detailed plates that make existing low-quality versions insufficient. The galleries include over 130 books digitized in their entirety, listed here:
https://ouhos.org/2010/06/19/digitized-books/
Examples of digitized books include Regiomontanus, Kalendarium (1476); Vesalius, De fabrica (1543); Agricola, De re metallica (1556); Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum historia (1570); Gerard’s Herball (1597); Hooke’s Micrographia (1665); the celestial atlases of Bayer (1661) and Bode (1801); William Smith’s geological map of England and Wales (1815); and Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3 (1838-43).

The non-copyrighted images are offered with generous terms of use, although attribution is required:
https://ouhos.org/2010/06/03/images-terms-of-use/

To add interest to browsing the galleries, there are several rotating content galleries:

• Featured Books: a rotating selection of digitized books (cf. complete list).
• Featured Manuscripts: images from a rotating selection of Collections’ handwritten manuscripts, currently including a Samurai manual and “Memoirs of Niels Bohr” by Jens Rud Nielsen.
• Featured Pages: by various authors in a number of subjects.

We hope these rotating galleries will put some of the most interesting new digitized items at your fingertips and make it more convenient for you to discover colorful and exciting new images.

For more information, see the History of Science Collections blog:
https://ouhos.org/

OU participates in a consortium of collaborating institutions for digital projects in the history of science, and has contributed books to some of these projects. For more information, click the Digital Projects category in the right margin of this blog.