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Library of Congress publishes historical photos on Flickr

By Tim Conneally | Published January 17, 2008, 5:41 PM

The Library of Congress has published over 3,000 photographs from two of its most popular collections on Flickr in "The Commons," a project aimed at creating a rich database of photos from public collections and civic institutions.

Photos from the George Grantham Bain Collection and the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information were chosen for display online due to their popularity on the Library of Congress site, and their freedom from copyright restrictions.

By posting these photos, the Library hopes to not only increase their visibility, but also increase their value through social tagging and community input. The Bain collection has minimal identifying information, and the FSA/OWI collection has only some subject indexing, so comments and tags are encouraged.

The Library is also open to suggestions for which collections to post in the future, and according to the FAQ, many already have photos of the American Civil War in mind.

Photo from Library of Congress' Flickr collection

Comments

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Bogunch
Jan 18, 2008 - 11:17 AM

??? "The Library is also open to suggestions for which future collections to post,..."

WTF ...or do you mean - whch collections to post in the furture???

Score: 0

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Avion Airplane
Jan 18, 2008 - 8:20 AM

now how cool is that

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Banquo
Jan 17, 2008 - 6:06 PM

Nice, a fresh source of desktop wallpapers.

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