thearchivist.funFlickr Commons invites the public into photo archives
Flickr and the Library of Congress launched a Commons pilot in January 2008, inviting people to enrich historical photographs with knowledge.
Context and provenance
The January 16, 2008 Commons announcement described a partnership between Flickr and the Library of Congress. The pilot placed roughly 1,500 photographs from each of two collections on Flickr. Its aims were to expose institutional collections to more people and gather public knowledge that might improve their catalogs. Tags were central to the proposal: a person recognizing a subject could make a photograph easier for someone else to discover. This joined an established archive to a participatory interface. It did not erase the difference between a documented catalog fact and a visitor's suggestion. Instead, it created an opportunity to connect them and assess what the added knowledge could contribute.
Why it matters
The Commons demonstrated that access and description can develop together. Public participation can reveal useful context, provided the archive keeps provenance and the status of contributed information clear.