The service, called Science Image, is due to launch this week as the CSIRO puts finishing touches on the Web site. It will provide pictures spanning the CSIRO's broad work-base, which includes agriculture, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer technology, energy, gene technology, health and weather.
The images will be available for educational, media and commercial uses, as well as for staff creating leaflets and posters.
"There will be low-quality images, with a file size up to 100KB, available for educational use-such as student projects, or for use by teachers in their class worksheets," CSIRO spokeswoman Lucy Fisher told PC Week.
Images of up to 6MB will be used to promote press releases to media outlets-e-mailed releases will have links to appropriate free-to-use images within the online gallery. However, "hopefully people will pay us," for high-quality images for commercial use, Fisher said.
"We're curious to see [how much business the site will get]. There's a good market for quality images, particularly in science." Some individual divisions, such as Land and Water already market their own photography. The Entomology sector of the CSIRO does substantial trade-proving pictures of insects at least, are commercially viable.
"We currently have a broad selection of about 400 images from 10 divisions. We'd like to have between 50 to 100 images from each of the 27 divisions," Fisher said.
www.scienceimage.csiro.au
