  With the increasing adoption of digitization, more and more historical
visualizations created hundreds of years ago are accessible in digital
libraries online. It provides a unique opportunity for visualization and
history research. Meanwhile, there is no large-scale digital collection
dedicated to historical visualizations. The visualizations are scattered in
various collections, which hinders retrieval. In this study, we curate the
first large-scale dataset dedicated to historical visualizations. Our dataset
comprises 13K historical visualization images with corresponding processed
metadata from seven digital libraries. In curating the dataset, we propose a
workflow to scrape and process heterogeneous metadata. We develop a
semi-automatic labeling approach to distinguish visualizations from other
artifacts. Our dataset can be accessed with OldVisOnline, a system we have
built to browse and label historical visualizations. We discuss our vision of
usage scenarios and research opportunities with our dataset, such as textual
criticism for historical visualizations. Drawing upon our experience, we
summarize recommendations for future efforts to improve our dataset.
