Next, I look for images that aren’t too complex. It’s much easier to animate a butterfly flapping its wings on a blank background than one on a flower. What makes a good candidate, you may ask? For one, I look for images with uncomplicated backgrounds. It begged for a GIF: the squirrel had nothing in front of it, and once removed would leave am intact background. Uncommon Flying Squirrel from the Report on the Commissioner of Patents (1856). When I find a suitable image, I’ll either right-click and save it or use my snipping tool (“grab” on a Mac or “snipping tool” on a PC) to take a screenshot. Then I prefer the single page view (which is in the lower right of the reader). Once I find something of interest, I’ll click the Read Online link under the View the Book grouping on the left. Typically I just browse, either by date, subject, or even what’s been recently reviewed. I’ll usually go to the Smithsonian Libraries page to see what’s been recently digitized. The Internet Archive is an amazing repository of millions of digitized books from around the world, chock-a-block full of images that lend themselves to creating something fun. On the Internet Archive’s eBook and Texts section, you can browse by collection, library, or use the search feature to find books. Since these books are no longer under copyright restrictions, we aren’t limited in the creative reuse and remixing of the products. We digitize books for the main purpose of making them accessible for study and reference. Below, I’m going to go through the basic steps I take in order to turn images collected from our digitized books into the animated GIFs the Smithsonian Libraries posts to its Tumblr blog. Lucky for me, we live in a time when tools for making my twisted dreams come true are readily available. It might be a sign of a twisted mind, but I can’t help imagining illustrations and pictures from old books coming to life. From A system of anatomical plates of the human body by John Lizars (1840?)
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