Library of Congress on Flickr
The Library of Congress has uploaded thousands of historical photographs from the 1910’s, 30’s and 40’s to Flickr. Browsing the collection is not only an ideal means to whittle away the long workweek hours, but you could also be helping the LoC improve their records.
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.
This is just the beginning. Flickr is kicking off a pilot project called The Commons based on the LoC collection which will hopefully expand to cover other collections of historical, non-copyrighted works, all of them cross-referenced and tagged by the vast usership.
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