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The Commons - Library of Congress's Experiment with Flickr
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Since no one else is talking about this here, I will!
Debuting yesterday, the Library of Congress has added 3,115 photos from their archival collections to flickr in a special section called The Commons.
Along with the photos, you can view the descriptive metadata you would find in their online collections on each photos page. They're allowing any flickr member to add tags and post comments and add notes. These photos are all designated "no known copyright restrictions" at this point, a unique status that is not available to normal accounts.
You can add the Library of Congress as one of your contacts from their profile page, but so far they haven't joined any groups or added any favorites to their account. They have an extensive FAQ page and links to their blog & website on their profile page.
I'm thrilled to see this not only because I think these public domain historical photos should be as accessible as possible, but because I've always been frustrated by the clunky cataloging in the American Memory pages. Now I can help fix all the gaps in information (I like to know more about the technical data, like what kind of film was used) and unintuitive subject headings. And so can anybody else who cares to do so!
But fixing the tags isn't just for personal use. It has real consequences for the visibility of the images. Since Flickr added the Statistics tools for pro accounts about a month ago, I've noticed that the most commonly viewed images for my account (by far) are the images of my library's russian propaganda posters that I added to flickr for a library school project. I never would have seen this with flickr alone, because the majority of these views are coming from yahoo & google image searches. After seeing the kinds of keyword searches that made them possible, I've added more tags to my photos to make sure all the applicable images have the variations I've seen come through on searches to make them all as visible as possible. It's great to know that they're finally being viewed after mouldering away in a storage box for 60 some years.
Getting all of our library's (very limited) image archives up on an official flickr account where other people can see them has been a back burner project for me at work for a while. I know libraries are using flickr to show pictures of programs and exhibits, but is anyone else putting their actual image collections on flickr? They've got contact information on the Commons homepage for contacting Flickr if you want to join up.
My own ideas for the project were different than the Commons project, mostly because I've got a much more limited group of images to work with. (And no sway over Flickr's staff!) We have a collection of WWII Russian posters and some historical photographs taken by a WWII soldier in Japan just after the end of the war, so I've looked for groups that would match those topics and tracked the keywords people are using to find the images I've got on my personal account so we can "batch add" the best tags. The LOC isn't buying into these more interactive steps yet. What about your libraries? Surely I can't be the only library person who loves flickr and wants to explore using it as a secondary (and very visible) archive.
I'm frankly a little surprised not to see this new thing mentioned in this group yet - do librarians primarily use flickr as a source for blog photos? I'd think this is the best central place to discuss ideas like this, but maybe not. If you've seen interesting blog posts or articles about this new development (or written any), please posts links below - I for one would love to see them.
Originally posted at 4:03PM, 17 January 2008 PDT
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Emily Barney edited this topic 53 months ago.
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s5hiara. et al.:
I agree that this is an important project from several perspectives. Sites like flickr have several advantages over our library websites, at least for public domain content:
- the content is accessible and highly visible to millions of people
- users are already familiar with the interface from posting their own content and looking at items from their friends, sparing us the need to develop special tutorials
- tagging and comments. Over time, more libraries will have next-generation catalogs and digital library systems that incorporate these features, but they still won't have the huge user populations of services like flickr (or youtube, or facebook, etc.)
I don't think this will necessarily save our libraries any money. If anything, the increased exposure may increase demand for retrospective digitization. If so, perhaps the folks at forgood.yahoo.com/good_causes/campaigns_for_good/index.html would be willing lend a hand, especially for smaller libraries and museums.
Andrew
p.s. Wikimedia Commons is another good place to search for public domain & Creative Commons images.
Posted 53 months ago.
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Hello!
Here at the Beinecke we're working on a small pilot project to put some scans of commonplace books-- which have been described only at a broad collection-level-- up on Flickr. While this broadens Flickr's photographic focus, the project will still work with images. We're hoping that the Flickr interface can allow for collective transcription of handwritten documents, subject tagging and linkages which would be too labor-intensive for the Library to do, and take advantage of some of the features (like geo-mapping) that Flickr has built. It's an opportunity to take a service like Flickr and map it to the needs of our local community, and we're hoping to launch the collection in tandem with a master class in paleography held this Spring.
The LC Commons project is terrific, particularly as it sets up a copyright model for other institutions to follow, and in a very real sense opens up the field for other institutions.
As for blog posts about the Flickr Commons project, Archivesnext.org has an excellent oneaimed at the archives community, and Jessamyn West at librarian.net also has a post about LC's Common's project.
- Kathleen
Posted 53 months ago.
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Fans of The Commons have begun a new group dedicated to celebrating, exploring, promoting, and carrying forward The Commons. The over 300 members who have already joined and are actively engaged in the group, Flickr Commons, are staff of member institutions, Flickr staff, and regular Flickr members. Please join us -- including library and archive professionals -- in inventing new ways to use these very public archives!
Posted 42 months ago.
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It's also great to see that a number of other libraries (Nat. Library of New Zealand, Smithsonian Libraries [as part of the Smithsonian site], et al.) have joined in the Flickr Commons
Posted 41 months ago.
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