It’s been out for a month already and I’m slightly embarrassed to have just heard about it. Google is hosting an image archive for LIFE magazine, not just the amazing published photos, but also the millions of archived photos that nearly no one has before seen. In November about 20 percent of the photos had been scanned and Google expects to finish the project in just a few months. I really enjoy this photo of Governor William Stratton playing with his great dane.

You can go to the link above or include source:life in your Google Image search to limit to that collection. This collection goes back as far as the 1860s and can be browsed by decade, or by a short list of popular topics arranged by broad category (people, events, etc.).

I wonder what other large image collections will become available to the public? Earlier this year the Library of Congress released a photo archive on Flickr. This seems to be a pretty new thing for Google, they’ve indexed online images for years, but hosting as well? That’s news to me. Unlike other images found in the Google Image search, these images contain a limited amount of metadata, tags (they call them labels), related images, as well as a custom page template.

If you find a photograph you cannot live without, there seems to be a link on most photos to order a framed print from LIFE magazine using Qoop, an online photo, book, and other media production and sales site. Otherwise, you can use the photos for personal non-commercial use, though the larger versions have a LIFE watermark in the lower-right corner.