Flickr Has Success With Public Archives

As you know, we at DCist are already huge fans of Flickr, the photo sharing site, and were excited to hear earlier this year when they launched a new pilot project called The Commons. Flickr paired with museums and organizations that held public photographic archives, like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Each of them have their own Flickr stream and periodically update from their treasure chest of history.

Yesterday the Library of Congress sent out a press release outlining the huge success of the venture, stating:

We were essentially conducting an experiment to see how crowdsourcing might enhance the quality of the information we are able to provide about our collections, while also finding innovative ways to get those collections out to people who might have an avid interest in them.

Averaging 500,000 views a month on their stream, they've been able to not only share their archives with the public in an easily accessible way, but collect massive amounts of information about the photographs and their contents, all at almost no cost to the LoC. Names of places, people and events have been provided by Flickr users to fill out our national history books. Talk about a victory for the interwebs.

Photo at right, once only known from its caption as "Reid Funeral," has now been identified as showing "the crowd gathered outside of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during New York City funeral of Whitelaw Reid, American Ambassador to Great Britain," thanks to the Flickr Commons project.