I probably spend more time on Flickr than I do on any other website. There’s more raw information, and more narrative there than anywhere else on the web. It’s also one of the few web communities I’ve ever taken part of that works for nearly every member. It’s too good, and it just got even better.
Flickr and The Library of Congress have started a pilot project called The Commons. Here’s the whole deal. The Library of Congress uploads huge chunks of their beautiful and important collection, and we get to tag the photos for them. We also get to look at them, comment on them, write about them, order prints of them, promote them and maybe even find personal connections to them. I’m already so deeply moved by the war production imagery from their 1930s – 40s in Color set, since so many of the images were shot in the South Bay area here in Los Angeles, at plants I grew up passing. The workers in those photos probably even lived in worker’s housing similar to the bungalow housing I’ve lived in off and on over the past decade in San Pedro.
As of now, there are two sets online, 1930s-1940s in Color and News in the 1910s. Each has about 1500 photographs, more than enough to keep everyone quite busy and contented for a while, as we go about tagging things. Best thing since sliced bread. Go forth and tag!
At top – A drill press operator at North American’s Inglewood plant, October 1942. Photographer – Alfred T. Palmer.
Technorati Tags: photography, Library of Congress, Flickr, historical photographs, history, drill press operator, North American, The Commons, tagging, metadata
Awesome links! Thanks!