Recently, Michel Le Quer­rec friended me on Flickr. I’m not sure why, maybe to extend the reach of the project he’s work­ing on using the site, Pho­tos Nor­mandie. Appar­ently the National Archives of Canada (and the U.S.?) are upload­ing pic­tures from the Bat­tle of Nor­mandy, more than 2700 of them to date.

I found the pho­tographs fas­ci­nat­ing, even though the cap­tions and descrip­tions are in French, so I friended the site back, and now every day I see a few of these amaz­ing pic­tures mixed into my pho­to­stream. It’s very strange to see thumb­nails of dogs, nature, friends, chil­dren, libraries, and then the Bat­tle of Nor­mandy, but I find it an inter­est­ing use of Flickr and the images usu­ally force me to reflect on how lucky I am in this day and age. For some, it would be inter­est­ing to add in streams from Iraq, Kenya, and other places that would bring home the real­ity of the rest of the world, espe­cially in a class­room setting.

All of which was broil­ing in the back of my mind when I saw this incred­i­ble announce­ment from the Library of Con­gress, an insti­tu­tion I have to say I never thought would take this step.

My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven

“If all goes accord­ing to plan, the project will help address at least two major chal­lenges: how to ensure bet­ter and bet­ter access to our col­lec­tions, and how to ensure that we have the best pos­si­ble infor­ma­tion about those col­lec­tions for the ben­e­fit of researchers and pos­ter­ity. In many senses, we are look­ing to enhance our meta­data (one of those Web 2.0 buzz­words that 90 per­cent of our read­ers could prob­a­bly explain bet­ter than me).

The project is begin­ning some­what mod­estly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 mil­lion prints, pho­tographs and other visual mate­ri­als at the Library of Con­gress, more than 3,000 pho­tos from two of our most pop­u­lar col­lec­tions are being made avail­able on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copy­right restric­tions are known to exist.

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.

We’re also very excited that, as part of this pilot, Flickr has cre­ated a new pub­li­ca­tion model for pub­licly held pho­to­graphic col­lec­tions called “The Com­mons.” Flickr hopes—as do we—that the project will even­tu­ally cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion and involve­ment of other pub­lic insti­tu­tions, as well.

From the Library’s per­spec­tive, this pilot project is a state­ment about the power of the Web and user com­mu­ni­ties to help peo­ple bet­ter acquire infor­ma­tion, knowl­edge and—most importantly—wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power sim­ply through the process of mak­ing con­struc­tive use of it.” [Library of Con­gress Blog]

More info is avail­able here, here, and here. Major kudos to LOC for see­ing the oppor­tu­nity and seiz­ing it. Hope­fully the com­mu­nity will respond and help tag the images for retrieval, but it will be an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment either way. I am very impressed with this effort and can’t wait to watch it grow.