Flickr Commons

You may recall that the Flickr Commons launched last year with a very successful partnership between Flickr and the Library of Congress. A little over a year later, the Commons now includes 23 participating cultural institutions. The institutions post photographs which they have "reasonably concluded" are free of copyright restrictions under a new Flickr usage guideline called "no known copyright restrictions."

Flickr describes the two main objectives of the Commons program:

1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge.
   

User-generated tags help enable broader access to these photographs. For instance, a search on "artist" yields 175 results, "world's fair" results in 104 matches, and "vote" yields 54 results. Visit some of these collections to see if they include images that you might wish to use in your teaching and research. While you're there, use your expertise and unique perspective to add tags and enhance access for all.

You may conduct a search across all Commons collections, or within specific collections. The current Commons participants are:

The Library of Congress
Powerhouse Museum Collection
Brooklyn Museum
Smithsonian Institution
Bibliothèque de Toulouse
George Eastman House
Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
National Media Museum
National Maritime Museum
State Library of New South Wales
The Library of Virginia
Musée McCord Museum
Nationaal Archief
Australian War Memorial
Imperial War Museum Photograph Archive
National Library of New Zealand
New York Public Library
National Galleries of Scotland
State Library of Queensland
State Archives of Florida
Oregon State Archives
Nantucket Historical Association
The Swedish National Heritage Board