Library of Congress starts uploading to Flickr

by Todd ~ January 16th, 2008. Filed under: Museums, On the Web.

The Library of Congress has started uploading a portion of its most popular collections to Flickr. There are about 3000 images uploaded so far under a new copyright license devised with Flickr for institutions. This seems like a much better approach than the clunky PhotoMuse being developed (slowly) by ICP and the George Eastman House which appears to have stalled out altogether. LoC is hoping this example encourages other public collections to try a similar approach and I would hope that ICP and GEH abandon their custom effort and begin using their funds to make more work available more widely through Flickr, plus allowing the Flickr community faster and better descriptions and keyword tagging. More info over at LoC.gov.

The LoC images uploaded thus far appear to have a max size of 1024 wide, which is much smaller than what’s available for download directly from the LoC site. Some of those are high-res TIFF format scans suitable for making your own prints from (or purchasing through something like Shorpy.)

Plus, I like anything that raises the profile of Russell Lee.

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7 Responses to Library of Congress starts uploading to Flickr

  1. A Photo Editor - Library of Congress on Flickr
    January 17th, 2008 at 7:15 am

    [...] Gallery Hopper (here). Thanks [...]

  2. Amateur Review of LoC Archive Yields Photos of 2nd Lincoln Inauguration at Gallery Hopper
    January 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    [...] on the heels of the news that the Library of Congress is uploading images to Flickr, I ran across an article in the LA Times about newly discovered photographs of the 1965 Lincoln [...]

  3. Library of Congess on Flickr | Photo Progress
    January 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    [...] Gallery Hooper: The Library of Congress has started uploading a portion of its most popular collections to Flickr. [...]

  4. Miguel Garcia-Guzman
    January 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

    You indicate that it is possible to download high res images from the library of congress. I searched the site and I don’t find high res files for the pictures. Is there a link you can share to find the high res images?

    Thanks very much

    Miguel

  5. Todd W.
    January 17th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

    The LoC site is a bit of a beast to navigate, so sometimes the links to the actual files are tough to find. If you do a search or browse the collections, you will get pages for individual photographs or prints that give all the relevant archive information for the image. Clicking on the thumbnail at the top of one of those pages will take you to another page where various formats of download can be found. That page contains a link to a large JPG like they are uploading to Flickr as well as a massive TIFF file, 30MB+ in most cases. One of these TIFFs I’ve downloaded before was scanned at 1200 ppi.

    I’d provide links, but the LoC system uses temporary URLs that expire after a short time.

  6. The Library of Congress is Uploading to Flickr! Really! « ChromaticSoul
    January 25th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    [...] 19 January 2008 in News Yes, the REAL Library of Congress is uploading to Flickr. So far they have two sets: 1930s-40s in Color and News in the 1910s. [via Gallery Hopper] [...]

  7. Ryan Donahue
    July 19th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    Fair enough about Photo Muse, but the project is still ongoing, and we may be able to breathe new life into it yet.

    But, I’m happy to say, GEH is on Flickr now too.

    http://www.flickr.com/commons

    -Cheers!
    Ryan Donahue
    Webmaster, George Eastman House