Library of Congress Places 3,000 Photos on Flickr

Last week brought the news of an exciting development from the photo sharing website Flickr and the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has uploaded over 3,000 photos to Flickr. The photos have been placed into an experimental pool of images called The Commons; all of these photos have a designation of "no known copyright restrictions."

I was encouraged to read what LC Director of Communications Matt Raymond had to say about this project: “The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment, and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images."

From statements like these, it's clear that Raymond and others at the Library of Congress understand what Library and Web 2.0 are all about. In the case of Flickr, it's all about empowering the individual to tag content and organize images in a way that's meaningful to them. See these historic photos for yourself! Check out Photos from the Library of Congress on Flickr.