For the Common Good: 

The Library of Congress 

Flickr Pilot Project 

October 30, 2008 

Michelle Springer, Beth Dulabahn, Phil Michel, Barbara Natanson, David Reser, 

David Woodward, and Helena Zinkham 
Table of Contents 

Executive Summary.................................................................................................................iii 

Background............................................................................................................................... 1 

Development of a Pilot ............................................................................................................. 2 

Challenges to Launch............................................................................................................ 5 

Photo Selection and Preparation ........................................................................................... 6 

Technical Issues.................................................................................................................... 8 

Resources.............................................................................................................................. 9 

Final Phase.......................................................................................................................... 12 

Outcomes ................................................................................................................................ 14 

Increasing Awareness ......................................................................................................... 14 

Gaining a Better Understanding of Social Tagging and Community Input........................ 17 

Tags................................................................................................................................. 18 

Comments....................................................................................................................... 25 

Notes............................................................................................................................... 32 

Gaining Experience Participating in Web 2.0 Communities.............................................. 32 

Recommendations and Conclusion......................................................................................... 33 

Appendix A: Examples of Flickr Interactions........................................................................ 37 

Appendix B: Strategic Goals and the Flickr Project............................................................... 40 

Appendix C: Media Coverage ................................................................................................ 44 

Appendix D: Catalog Records for FSA/OWI and Bain.......................................................... 46 

Appendix E: Traffic to the Library’s Web Site ...................................................................... 47 

Note: Photo on the cover is “Women Enlisting - England,” Bain News Service, publisher, [between 1910 and 

1915]. http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163930482/

ii
Executive Summary 

The Library of Congress, like many cultural heritage organizations, faces a number of 

challenges as it seeks to increase discovery and use of its collections. A major concern is 

making historical and special format materials easier to find in order to be useful for 

educational and other pursuits. At the same time, resources are limited to provide detailed 

descriptions and historical context for the many thousands of items in research collections. 

The Library also faces competition for the attention of an online community that has everexpanding choices of where to pursue its interests. 

One solution worth exploring is to participate directly in existing Web 2.0 communities that 

offer social networking functionality. Reaching out to unknown as well as known audiences 

can attract more people to comment, share, and interact with libraries. Taking collections to 

where people are already engaged in community conversations might also encourage visits to 

a library’s Web site where the full wealth of resources are available. 

To begin to address these issues, staff in the Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) approached 

the Library Services Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) in early 2007. A small team 

developed a pilot project that could be rapidly implemented with limited resources. The 

formal Library of Congress strategic goals to expand outreach and improve the user 

experience shaped the primary objectives: 

• increase awareness by sharing photographs from the Library’s collections with people 

who enjoy images but might not visit the Library’s own Web site, 

• gain a better understanding of how social tagging and community input could benefit 

both the Library and users of the collections, and 

• gain experience participating in the emergent Web communities that would be 

interested in the kinds of materials in the Library’s collections. 

Once the popular photosharing Web site Flickr was selected as a venue that would meet the 

Library’s requirements, the pilot team contacted Flickr to discuss its available rights 

statement options--none of which was appropriate for the Library’s content. These 

discussions began the collaboration that resulted in the launch of The Commons 

(www.flickr.com/commons), a designated area of Flickr where cultural heritage institutions 

can share photographs that have no known copyright restrictions to increase awareness of 

their collections. Flickr members are invited to engage with Commons collections by 

describing the items through tags or comments. A growing number of libraries, museums, 

iii
and archives, intrigued by the possibilities of this model, have followed the Library’s lead 

and launched accounts within the Commons framework. 

Two collections of historical photographs were made public on a Library account on the 

Flickr photosharing site in January 2008. The response from Flickr members and observers 

of the pilot was overwhelmingly positive and beneficial. The following statistics attest to the 

popularity and impact of the pilot: 

• As of October 23, 2008, there have been 10.4 million views of the photos on Flickr. 

• 79% of the 4,615 photos have been made a “favorite” (i.e., are incorporated into 

personal Flickr collections). 

• Over 15,000 Flickr members have chosen to make the Library of Congress a 

“contact,” creating a photostream of Library images on their own accounts. 

• For Bain images placed on Flickr, views/downloads rose approximately 60% for the 

period January-May 2008, compared to the same time period in 2007. 

Views/downloads of FSA/OWI image files placed on Flickr rose approximately 13%.

• 7,166 comments were left on 2,873 photos by 2,562 unique Flickr accounts. 

• 67,176 tags were added by 2,518 unique Flickr accounts. 

• 4,548 of the 4,615 photos have at least one community-provided tag. 

• Less than 25 instances of user-generated content were removed as inappropriate. 

• More than 500 Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) records have been 

enhanced with new information provided by the Flickr Community. 

• Average monthly visits to all PPOC Web pages rose 20% over the five month period 

of January-May 2008, compared to the same period in 2007. 

This project significantly increased the reach of Library content and demonstrated the many 

kinds of creative interactions that are possible when people can access collections within 

their own Web communities. The contribution of additional information to thousands of 

photographs was invaluable. Performance measures documented in this report illustrate how 

the project has been successful in achieving the objectives and desired outcomes of the 

Library’s strategic goals. The Flickr project increases awareness of the Library and its 

collections; sparks creative interaction with collections; provides LC staff with experience 

with social tagging and Web 2.0 community input; and provides leadership to cultural 

heritage and government communities. The specific strategic goals are listed in Appendix B. 

Concerns about loss of control over content will continue to be discussed but can also be 

mitigated. Community practices and forums like the new Flickr Commons, where cultural 

organizations can now offer collections, help reduce the risks. Pilots like the Flickr project 

iv
provide practical experience and concrete data on Web 2.0 risks and rewards, and help staff 

learn to operate in less formal environments that enhance recognition for a library’s valuable 

cultural roles. 

As the Library considers new strategies to make its resources available, discoverable, and 

useful, pilots of this type are essential for learning how best to engage audiences with library 

collections in ways that benefit the public at large. The Flickr team recommends that this 

experiment in Web 2.0 become an ongoing program with expanded involvement in Flickr 

Commons and other appropriate social networking opportunities for non-photographic 

collections. The benefits appear to far outweigh the costs and risks. 

Key Links for More Information 

• The Commons http://www.flickr.com/commons/

• Library of Congress Photos on Flickr: Frequently Asked Questions 

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot_faq.html 

• Library of Congress Photos on Flickr (announcing the pilot and linked off the 

Library’s Home page) http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html

• The Library of Congress Profile on Flickr 

http://www.flickr.com/people/library_of_congress/

• The Library of Congress Flickr Account 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress. 

v
Background 

“The Library of Congress is asking the public for help.” This message exploded on the Web 

in the week following the launch of the surprisingly popular Library of Congress Flickr pilot 

project on January 16, 2008. What value did the Library perceive could be gained by joining 

a social media photosharing site? Like any cultural heritage institution, the Library of 

Congress is always seeking to broaden the awareness of the resources that it collects, 

preserves, and makes accessible to the public to inspire, educate, and illuminate. The Library, 

a pioneer in the digitization of its collections, recognizes the power of the Web to enhance 

access and expose these resources to the world. 

As the Library seeks to reach new audiences and increase discovery and use of our unique 

collections, we face a number of challenges: a limit to institutional resources to provide 

detailed descriptions, historical context, and transcriptions of the thousands of items in large 

collections; a need to make the materials in those collections easily retrievable and 

accessible; competition for the attention of an online community that has ever expanding 

choices of where to pursue their interests, and a technical infrastructure that does not easily 

allow users to comment, share, and interact with content in the manner offered by popular 

social networking sites. 

We entered this pilot with a number of questions about how Web 2.0 environments might 

help the Library meet its challenges. Could Web users contribute useful information, 

knowledge, and energy for the Library? Could the Library tap the knowledge and energy of 

the user community to augment its own efforts? As users become increasingly accustomed to 

tagging online content for their own purposes, would they be interested in contributing 

information for community benefit? What’s the quality of the information gained through 

crowdsourcing? Would the pay-off justify the Library’s investments in such an effort? 

Attempting to address these questions led to the launch of the Library of Congress (LC) 

Flickr Pilot project at http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress.

1

 In the months 

since launch, this project has allowed the Library to 

• encourage discovery of historical material by presenting it in a venue that heretofore 

 

1 For additional information see: “Library of Congress Photos on Flickr: Frequently Asked Questions,” at 

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot_faq.html ; “Library of Congress Photos on Flickr.” at 

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html and the Library’s Flickr profile page at 

http://www.flickr.com/people/library_of_congress/. The Library of Congress Flickr Account 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress. 

1
had been focused on contemporary, personal materials and increase engagement with 

those materials; 

• increase learning and stimulate an educational interest in history; 

• foster the development of personal relationships with these materials as they are 

shared, identified as favorites, and re-used in new creative ways; 

• stimulate communication, not just between members of the public and the Library, 

but also with each other, using Library material as a catalyst to spark those 

conversations; 

• tap into the expertise in the communities of interest on the Web and elicit 

contributions that provide a richer experience for the users of the collections; 

• collect user-centric, relevant terms that have the potential to increase retrieval of 

items in the Library’s collection; 

• learn by doing; and 

• surface issues related to presentation and engagement that can inform decisions about 

the materials presented on the Library’s own Web site. 

The pilot resulted in many positive yet unplanned outcomes: Flickr members’ willingness to 

expend high levels of effort on history detective work; the unprompted sourcing of new 

information through links to newspaper archives and highly specialized Web sites; the 

outpouring of appreciation for having started this project and the positive reception for old 

un-retouched photos; the desire of other institutions to launch similar efforts; the rapid speed 

of news about the project within the first few days of reaching the blogosphere; and the speed 

with which new tags and comments continue to be added following our weekly upload of 

new photos. What follows outlines how we approached the development of the pilot, the 

outcomes of this experiment, and what we’ve learned. 

Development of a Pilot 

In early 2007, discussions began among a small group of staff in the Library’s Office of 

Strategic Initiatives (OSI) about exploring user-generated content in connection with LC’s 

digital resources. Various alternatives were weighed, and photographs were proposed as 

good candidates for an initial effort. Why photographs as a first step? Photographs have the 

advantage of being interesting to a wide variety of audiences who can potentially add useful 

information. They can be appreciated on many different levels regardless of a viewer’s native 

language or expertise and can be quickly absorbed at a basic level without an extended time 

investment. In addition, the Library has large collections of photographs that could benefit 

from added description. 

2
OSI approached the Library Services’ Prints and Photographs Division (P&P), which was 

receptive to the idea of a pilot, not only to expand the visibility of the Library of Congress’ 

photo collections and to test user-generated content, but also to increase the public’s 

awareness of the photographic collections held by libraries generally. Soliciting help from 

volunteer researchers was not a new concept for P&P, which for years has benefited from 

information provided by volunteer experts and researchers. In 2005, for example, the 

Pictorial History Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research offered to review 

all of the baseball-related images within the George Grantham Bain News Service Collection 

to identify and provide more complete or corrected information about players, teams, 

stadiums, events, and dates. The information provided by the Committee allowed the Library 

to update caption information for more than 2,100 photographs in the collection. 

Our small team2 gathered to discuss strategies for a pilot and explore options. It was soon 

realized that a pilot to open even a test bed of Library of Congress photographs to public 

tagging on LC’s own site faced high technical and logistical hurdles. Various proprietary and 

open source solutions were discussed, but it was evident that any in-house solution would not 

be something we could do quickly, and we wanted to get started. In addition, there was a 

desire to keep initial expenditures and levels of effort low until analysis and assessments 

indicated that a more substantial resource investment would be warranted. The Library of 

Congress is a U.S. federal government agency, and policies and procedures for allowing 

user-generated content on its Web pages added another layer of complexity. 

The 2007 Computers in Libraries conference brought to our attention successful projects by 

the National Library of Australia and other cultural institutions on the photosharing Web site 

Flickr (www.flickr.com). We also knew of instances where members of the public, on their 

own initiative without Library of Congress involvement, had downloaded selected content 

from the Library’s Web site and uploaded it to their personal accounts on various social 

networking sites, not always with accurate (or any) statements of attribution or permissions 

status. We were also aware that a handful of federal agencies were experimenting with multichannel distribution strategies using social media Web sites in addition to offering content 

 

2

 Initially the team comprised Phil Michel, Barbara Natanson, and Helena Zinkham (Prints and Photographs 

Division); Beth Dulabahn, Michelle Springer, and Justin Thorp (Office of Strategic Initiatives), David Reser 

(Cataloging Policy and Support Office), and Erik Delfino (Technology Policy Directorate). David Woodward 

from Information Technology Services subsequently joined the team to provide programming expertise. Hope 

O’Keeffe (Office of General Counsel) and Maria Pallante (Copyright Office) provided legal and copyright 

expertise; Matt Raymond and John Sayers managed public communication strategies; Joe Pagano analyzed LC 

Web statistics. Colleen Candrl, from the Catholic University of America library school, assisted the team 

throughout the spring as an OSI intern. 

3
via their own sites. 

The seeds were planted to look at established social media sites focused on images, where 

members were both passionate about photographs and well-versed in tagging. This would 

expose the Library’s collections to a diverse pool of the public and potentially gain an 

audience interested in interacting with those collections, as well as ensuring that authentic 

information about the collections was present and accurately sourced, along with links to 

enable additional discovery. In this context, three objectives supporting the Library’s 

strategic goals to increase Library outreach and improve the user experience, were 

formalized for a pilot. The relevant strategic goals are listed in Appendix B. The objectives 

were to: 

• increase awareness by sharing photographs from the Library’s collections with people 

who enjoy images but might not visit the Library’s own Web site; 

• gain a better understanding of how social tagging and community input could benefit 

both the Library and users of the collections; 

• gain experience participating in the emergent Web communities that would be 

interested in the kinds of materials in the Library’s collections. 

Aside from the obvious requirements to support tagging and photosharing, the optimal site 

would be one that offered more than image hosting; it would also provide a connection to an 

image-focused community. Once the team decided to use an external service, a set of 

principles guided the project and the selection of venue: 

• Content used in the pilot must be already available on the Library’s Web site. This 

offered several advantages, including increasing the likelihood that any unknown 

permissions issues would have surfaced in the years during which the Library had 

been offering this content on the Web. For materials already on the Library’s Web 

site, the Library and the public could be confident that the material would remain 

accessible regardless of the long-term viability or future access policies of the nonLibrary site. 

• Any agreement to place content on a non-LC site must be non-exclusive. 

• Access to the Library’s content must be free (i.e., without cost).

• Notwithstanding advertisements that might appear on various search results pages, no 

advertising should appear on the Library’s account page in close proximity to the 

Library’s content. An option to control or entirely exclude advertising on the account 

was preferred.

• The Library should be clearly identified as the source of the content. Pages with 

Library content should be branded both graphically and through account naming 

4
conventions.

• The site must allow the Library to remove and moderate user-supplied content to 

ensure that inappropriate material, if found, could be promptly removed (or in a premoderation model, not be posted). 

• The material uploaded by the Library must be clearly distinguishable from any nonLibrary generated content. 

• It must be possible to accurately convey the copyright status of the material. 

Flickr was identified as a venue that would meet our requirements and in which we could 

observe these principles, save one. Flickr had a vibrant and large photosharing community 

(gaining in name-recognition and market share in mid-2007); it was built to allow tagging, 

comments, and notes; the community conversations were focused on photos and 

photography; and, it offered APIs that allowed for batch loading of photos and extraction of 

community provided information.3 The single impediment to using Flickr was that the 

licensing statement options they provided were not suitable to describe the copyright status 

of the LC material. 

Challenges to Launch 

None of the available license options offered by Flickr was appropriate for a cultural 

institution that was not the originator or creator of a work. Like most collecting institutions, 

the Library of Congress contains valuable archives of photographs for which there are no 

known copyright restrictions. In contrast to a photographer or other rights holder, however, 

the Library does not own copyright for its materials and has no authority to waive copyright 

protection or to transfer or license exclusive rights. Lack of evidence of any rights holder is 

not the same thing as stating affirmatively that something is in the public domain. 

The pilot team contacted managers at Flickr, detailing the goals of the pilot and raising concerns 

related to the licensing options. These discussions produced the “No known copyright restrictions” 

licensing statement programmed by Flickr staff to appear on the Library’s account and began the 

collaboration that resulted in the launch of The Commons.4

 Developing a new rights statement was 

 

3

 For more information on Flickr, see http://www.flickr.com/help/faq/. 4

 The Commons is a Flickr initiative in which cultural heritage institutions share photographs that have no 

known copyright restrictions as a way to increase awareness of their collections. Flickr members are invited to 

engage with Commons collections by describing the items through tags or comments. A growing number of 

libraries and museums, intrigued by the possibilities of this model, have followed the Library’s lead and 

launched accounts within the Commons framework. For more information on The Commons, see: 

http://www.flickr.com/commons; more information on the rights statement can be found at 

http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/. 

5
not an initial project goal. But as we worked through this issue with Flickr staff, we had an 

opportunity to propose a new model that would allow for any collecting institution to contribute 

items while stating the rights information that they believed, but could not warrant, to be true. 

Photo Selection and Preparation 

As possible collections were nominated for consideration, two principles emerged: include a 

mix of images with varying amounts of metadata to gauge the kind of tags and notes users 

were interested in contributing; and, try to appeal to a number of audiences by covering a 

breadth of subjects, locations, and time periods. 

Approximately 1,600 color photographs in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War 

Information (FSA/OWI) collection have proven popular with diverse communities, both 

national and international. In addition to representing excellent photographic work from the 

1930s-40s, the FSA/OWI photos consistently surprise and delight viewers unaware of the 

existence of high quality color images from that period. The catalog records maintained for 

these images have fairly complete captions and include topical and geographic subject 

headings added by Library catalogers in 1984-1985. 

Complementing this color collection with a black-and-white collection was an attractive 

option, and the George Grantham Bain News Service collection, digitized in 2005-2007, was 

deemed a good match. It featured sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, 

political activities, women’s suffrage, and other newsworthy events from the early 1900s. 

Most of the images have very little subject information beyond abbreviated key words in the 

titles and are good candidates for additional research and description. To balance the 

FSA/OWI collection, a sequential run of approximately 1,500 photos was selected for 

inclusion from the approximately 40,000 glass negative images that have been digitized. We 

released the two sets with 3,000 images all at once. We recognized that uploading such a 

large number of photos at once would be a departure from typical photosharing behavior, but 

we wanted to show the diversity of the collection content, possibly encourage repeat viewing, 

and provide a range of choices for our potential crowd of participants. 

 

Once the target collections were identified, we had to decide how to present them. Although we 

could have organized them into various multiple sets by subject at least within the FSA/OWI 

collection (e.g., “women in wartime,” “military aircraft,” and “farming”), there were compelling 

arguments against that approach. We didn’t want to pre-determine how the two collections would be 

experienced (we were asking the community to describe that via tagging, after all), and as noted, the 

Bain collection had little subject information so the level of effort would have been prohibitive. We 

6
decided to leave the original order of the collections in tact with two exceptions. As the large set 

sizes meant that the photos at the beginning and the end of the photostream for each set would be 

viewed the most, we pre-selected 20 interesting images to “book-end” the color set. In addition, the 

few news photos that show graphic violence or nudity were not uploaded to Flickr to ensure that we 

complied with the Flickr Community guidelines for its “safe” search filter, (recommending “Content 

suitable for a global, public audience” and children). 5

Because the Library could control the elements of the records accompanying the 

photographs, this project provided a place to experiment and modify the display and 

sequence of catalog record elements. We also decided to add links to Library Web pages, 

because these records would display independently of and could be exported far beyond the 

context of the LC Web site. 

Ultimately, modifications to MARC records included adding notes about the sources of the 

original (historical) titles and adding lot numbers to an item-group linking field (MARC field 

773) to allow for parsing the FSA/OWI set into smaller batches of related images as needed. 

Three links to Library Web pages were embedded into each of the FSA/OWI and Bain 

records: 

• the URL (“handle”) of the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) highest 

resolution TIFF file, identified as “persistent URL” (rather than “digital ID”), 

• the URL (“handle”) of the Prints and Photographs Reading Room Home page, added 

to the repository information (MARC field 852), and 

• the URL (“handle”) of a page with general information about the FSA/OWI or Bain 

collections to connect viewers to contextual information about each image (MARC 

field 545). It was initially added just to Flickr project records, but is now being added 

to all PPOC records. 

The Minaret software used by P&P to manage these two collections is flexible and could 

accommodate these global updates without a high level of effort. On Flickr, selected 

elements of the PPOC MARC records were loaded as descriptions with user-friendly labels. 

We could have turned the subject terms in the MARC records into Flickr tags, but the idea 

was discarded in an effort to reduce any unintended influence on the tagging suggestions of 

the Flickr community. 

 

5

 http://www.flickr.com/help/filters/#258 

7
Technical Issues 

It was determined early in the technical investigation stage that purchase of a Flickr Pro 

Account (currently $24.95 US annually) would expand the options we would have on the 

account, such as loading an unlimited number of sets and collections with unlimited 

bandwidth, removing limitations on the number of photos viewable in our photostream, and 

allow uploading photos up to 20MB each. Finally, as a Flickr Pro Account holder, the 

Library would have access to daily aggregated statistics of the page views, visits, referrers, 

and community activity on the account. 

Flickr provides their account holders with a step-by-step process to manually upload photos 

and descriptive information. Several requirements of the pilot made manual upload methods 

inadequate. We needed: 

• an automated method to derive Flickr display titles and descriptions from existing 

MARC records using prescribed mapping 

• to use existing image files that were already associated with the descriptive 

information 

• a repeatable process that would allow ongoing uploads of additional photo batches to 

the appropriate set and accommodate changes (such as the need to overwrite titles 

and descriptions for photos already in our Flickr account after updating the source 

records with new information from Flickr members) 

• to associate the photos and activity in our Flickr account with the corresponding 

source photos in the Library's collections in order to support subsequent updates, and 

• to be able to do all this with batches of up to 1,500 photographs. 

A customized upload application was required. Fortunately, Flickr allows access to its Web 

services through a public application programming interface (API) in a variety of 

programming languages. Additionally, third party developers have created software 

development kits that ease the use of the API. Using the flickrj toolkit for java and marc4j (a 

MARC record toolkit), an Information Technology Services (ITS) staff member developed a 

specialized application to upload photos and implement the MARC-to-title-and-description 

mapping. 

Using identifying information from the catalog record and Flickr’s machine tags, the upload 

application was able to store the association between each Flickr photo and its source photo. 

Machine tags use a special syntax to define extra information about a tag and take this form: 

<namespace>:<predicate>=<value>. One machine tag was added containing an identifier for 

8
the photo (based on its digital identifier/handle), and a second machine tag put the identifier 

in the context of the Dublin Core namespace (defining the identifier type used to express the 

first machine tag). Here is an example of a machine tag combination: 

 dc:identifier=http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.11317 

xmlns:dc=http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/ 

To facilitate moderation and detailed analysis of community activity, the Library developed 

another set of applications to harvest the comments, tags, and notes generated by the Flickr 

membership. Using Flickr APIs, this information is downloaded in a format suitable for 

relational databases and spreadsheets. Other custom applications allow viewing of harvested 

comments relating LC and Flickr IDs. These technical solutions made it efficient to manage 

the new information being provided by the Flickr community and to analyze the kinds of tags 

and comments we received. 

Resources 

Compared to the impact of the Flickr pilot, Library investments were relatively minor. No 

staff members were ever assigned to work full time on this project; work was performed in 

addition to other ongoing priorities, and deadlines were adjusted accordingly. A number of 

factors affected our resource allocation, and experience at other institutions may vary 

depending on their circumstances. The technical work in our case was fairly straightforward. 

For example, the team had access to in-house IT expertise and experience with the image and 

record files, and a large body of images was already digitized with metadata available to 

optimize for Web display. 

Investigation of technical requirements and how to meet them began during the summer of 

2007. Technical requirements were primary addressed by two team members, one with 

programming expertise and one with curatorial expertise. Some of this work is discussed in 

the Technical Issues section of this report and includes determining how to link content in 

Flickr to the Library source content via machine tags, formatting those tags, loading the 

featured images for the sets, and checking account settings. 

Non-recurring Resource Allocation 

Approximately 222 hours of technical programming work was performed over a six- month 

period. Broken into discrete tasks, this included: 

• 24 hours investigating Flickr API and helper kits and establishing upload 

requirements, input format, and display mappings 

• 80 hours of designing, coding, and initial testing of upload, delete, and update 

9
programs 

• 60 hours of design, coding, and testing activity reporting programs and databases 

• 8 hours of uploading the initial batch of photos 

• 50 hours of testing, completing the record preparation (this included completing any 

lingering image-related issues and image cleanup if needed), and ensuring that no 

images were included in the pilot set that would be inconsistent with Flickr’s 

community guidelines. 

Once Flickr set the date by which they would perform the necessary programming to allow a 

new rights statement to appear on the Library’s account, the implementation team began to 

meet in earnest each week. Approximate staff time for pre-launch preparation included: 

• 20 hours of team meetings and discussions (8 staff members @ 20 meetings = 160 

total staff hours) on non-technical tasks 

• 10 hours of drafting and coding various descriptive materials to appear on Flickr and 

loc.gov. This included composing the account profile and set descriptions, identifying 

what were likely to be the frequently asked questions and drafting the answers, 

designing the page on the Library’s site describing the pilot, working with the Office 

of Communications on the new Library brand mark, which debuted publicly with this 

project. 

• 6 hours of developing procedures to work with expected user-generated content (e.g., 

moderation of content added to the account, reviewing likely group requests, handling 

Flickrmail inquiries and responses, etc.). 

• 45 hours of communications work including arranging internal briefings and external 

publicity. 

Sporadic dialogs between Flickr and the Library stakeholders took place throughout 2007 to 

discuss various issues related to the proposed project. The time line for this phase was more 

a reflection of the challenge to coordinate the busy work and travel schedules of key 

individuals (both at Flickr and the Library) than of the complexities of the collaboration. This 

phase, involving approximately 70 hours of staff time, included: 

• meetings of project team leads with Library legal and copyright counsel to establish 

the parameters under which such a project could operate 

• conference calls made between Flickr and Library staff enumerating and resolving the 

copyright statement issues 

• Library General Counsel attorneys working with Flickr legal staff on the language for 

a modified Yahoo Terms of Service Agreement that would reflect the indemnification 

limitations on federal agencies. 

10
Recurring Resource Allocations 

External expenditures consisted only of a $24.95 Flickr Pro Account, necessary to allow the 

Library to upload an unlimited number of photos. This will be an annual expense as long as 

the project continues. 

Since January, more than 15 P&P staff members (almost half the staff including reference 

service, cataloging, and digital library perspectives) have participated in LC’s Flickr account 

to gain experience interacting with Web 2.0 communities. The popularity of the project 

immediately after launch resulted in an unexpectedly high amount of user activity, strongly 

impacting the time and personnel needed to moderate the user-generated content. All new 

user-generated content is monitored frequently for spam and offensive material. A miniscule 

amount (fewer than 25 instances) of the user-generated content has required removal. This 

includes the rare occasions when a tag deemed inappropriate by multiple Flickr users was 

called to our attention in the comments or by Flickrmail. 

A greater investment of time is spent to verify and incorporate new information about the 

photos. In total, these activities include (on average): 

• 2 hours a week to check the account activity for spam or obscene material. This 

includes a check of the master list of all tags, performed once a week. Two team 

members in the Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) rotate this moderation 

responsibility 

• 15-20 hours a week spent by a P&P staff member (or his backup) on all aspects of 

community activity: reviewing and verifying provided sources to substantiate new 

information, determining suitability for addition to PPOC records, responding to 

questions from the community placed in the comments, and evaluating requests to 

add pictures to groups 

• 10 minutes per photo description to modify the Library of Congress source records in 

PPOC as a result of information submitted by Flickr viewers 

Project coordination activities can take up to 10 hours a week. The 7-member team continues 

to meet one hour a week as needed to discuss issues, such as new functionality introduced to 

Commons members and requests for information. Time investment on project management 

tasks such as compiling statistics (beyond what is provided by Flickr), tracking use of LC 

Flickr photos in blogs and other Web pages, communicating with Flickr executives, keeping 

team members and other interested Library staff informed of new Commons developments, 

preparing briefings, etc., takes about 2 hours a week on average. 

11
Uploading a new batch of 50 Bain photos each Friday requires 45-60 minutes a week for 

P&P to prepare the photos and records; it takes roughly the same amount of time for those 

photos and records to be batch uploaded to Flickr by Information Technology Services. 

Photos from new collections might take more time depending on idiosyncrasies of the 

collections selected. 

Final Phase 

As the pilot phase wraps up, exploration of Flickr community interests continues. To 

commemorate the November 11th armistice ending World War I, the Library is participating 

in the first synchronized uploading by Commons members of photos on the same subject. 

The Library will offer a set of 15 photographs with a World War I theme from a collection of 

more than 4,000 panoramic photos. In addition, we are preparing a new set using the 

Library’s Photochrom Print Collection to try alternating with the news photos. The colored 

images in this collection look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs 

that feature travel views of Europe, the Middle East, and North America created in the 

1890s-1910s. When color photography was still rare, demand for these color images was 

high, and they seem likely to appeal to new audiences one hundred years later.

12
Figure 1. Midnight Sun, Bell Sound, Norway, approximately 1900. Photochrom Print 

Collection.6

 

6 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.06255

13
Outcomes 

Increasing Awareness 

Ironically, some of the email and comments we received after launch noted how pleased 

people were to see the Library “begin” to digitize their photographs and make them available 

online. In fact, the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) at 

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html contains more than one million digitized images that 

have been available on the Library’s Web site for years. Feedback of this nature suggests that 

as a result of this project the Library is reaching new audiences—people who did not or could 

not find this material on our own site, and people who never thought to look here. 

In the first 24 hours after launch, Flickr reported 1.1 million total views on our account; a 

little over a week later, the account had received 3.6 million page views and 1.9 million total 

visits. That included over 2 million views of the photos, and over 1 million views of the 

photostream. By early October, LC photos were averaging approximately 500,000 views a 

month and had crossed the 10 million mark in total views and the 6 million mark for visits. 

Interestingly, 82% of this traffic was referred from within Flickr; only 3% came from search 

engines. Users continue to offer substantive comments on individual photos, which engages 

fellow Flickr members and increases interest in our photos. Following the typical Flickr 

pattern of use, we’ve noticed over time that Mondays regularly show an uptick in the number 

of views. Daily views for the month of August ranged from 11,119 to 48,585 and averaged 

18,263 per day. These spikes can be dramatic, moving from 11,000 views on a Sunday to 

41,000 views the next day. 

The decision to publicize this pilot solely via the Library and Flickr blogs rather than by the 

usual method of a press release tested a new model for getting the word out on Library 

initiatives. The reaction by the blogosphere was astonishing and resulted in thousands of blog 

posts picking up the story, prompting coverage in the mainstream media: newspapers, 

magazines, online news services, even television and radio began to cover the pilot (see 

Appendix C for a bibliography of the coverage). Most posts linked to the Flickr and Library 

of Congress blogs, which unexpectedly translated into significant visibility for the Library’s 

blog, in existence for less than a year at the time of launch. 

Another unexpected outcome was the relatively high visibility the Flickr account images 

receive on the major search engines. When relevant keywords are searched, the images 

14
placed on Flickr have greater weight and are returned higher in search engine results than 

their counterparts in the Library’s PPOC. A Google search for the baseball player Germany 

Schaefer produces the LC Flickr account photo “Germany Schaefer, Washington AL 

(baseball)”7

 as one of the top 5 results on the first Google page; the PPOC version of the 

same photo does not appear until the 5th page of search results. The major search engines 

index Flickr tags, comments, and notes, giving the Flickr versions extra weight in keyword 

queries. 

The surprise and pleasure at the positive reception to the Library’s pilot has been well 

documented (see Appendix C). Why were we so welcomed so warmly? Why did people tag 

our photos? Was it a type of altruism bred by media sharing sites like Flickr? Was it the fact 

that we specifically asked for help to tag our photos? Did some Flickr members approach the 

task as a game? Does releasing public content with no known restrictions create a sense of 

democratic access or increase the sense of public ownership and shared stewardship for 

public cultural heritage resources? Certainly the following factors contributed to the 

unanticipated explosion of interest in the account: 

• We appear to have tapped into the Web community’s altruistic substratum by asking 

people for help. Taggers tag for a variety of different reasons, and this diversity is 

part of what makes Flickr photo collections valuable to a wide membership base. The 

original Flickr blog post and text announcing the Commons (“This is for the good of 

humanity, dude!!”) struck just the right chord. People wanted to participate and liked 

being asked to contribute. 

• We satisfied a desire for high-quality content without copyright restrictions. Web 2.0 

is all about sharing. Providing a rich pool of images that users can easily add to their 

blogs, download, and re-use in a variety of creative ways satisfied that voracious 

appetite for unrestricted content. 

• The Library was the first institution participating in The Commons, and Flickr’s 

publicity about their new initiative usually included links to the Library’s account. 

• A venerable institution like the Library of Congress participating (and seemingly 

conversant) in a popular Web 2.0 space was unexpected and attracted attention. 

• The photos are wonderful. We knew from experience that these photos, particularly 

the color FSA/OWI images, were popular, not just with American but also 

international audiences. 

• The strategy to publicize this project via the blogosphere exponentially increased 

“word of mouth” traffic. People read the Flickr blog. As the public became aware of 

 

7 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2162646403/

15
the project, they fueled a grass-roots viral marketing campaign. 

In another measure of outreach success, 15,000 Flickr members have chosen to make the 

Library of Congress a “contact.” Flickr members select other members as “contacts” in order 

to set up a network of photostreams they’d like to visit often, to have an ‘address book’ of 

Flickr members that they want to keep in touch with without having to search for or 

remember the account name, and to easily view new photos loaded by contacts. 

We are more than satisfied that we have met our first goal of this pilot, which was to increase 

awareness of the Library’s photo collections. 

The primary Flickr community activity is simply looking at the photos, but Flickr offers 

additional ways for users to engage. The second most popular community activity has been 

bookmarking LC’s photos as “favorites,” which allows account holders to select and view 

Flickr photos they like as a single set on their own account, without having to click back to 

the original accounts to view them. 79% of the 4,615 photos currently in the Library of 

Congress account have been incorporated into one or more of these personal collections of 

favorite images, juxtaposing our historical images with selected contemporary photos in 

personal photo albums. Similarly, over the course of 8 months the Library has accepted over 

200 invitations from Flickr public group administrators. (Flickr members set up groups to 

gather images from different photo streams for viewing or discussion. Groups can either be 

public, public (invite only), or completely private.) We’ve allowed images from our account 

to appear in public groups designated safe for all ages, gathered on diverse themes (like 

“houses with towers” or “I love grain elevators”). These special subject groups add another 

way in which Flickr viewers may serendipitously come across our photos. (For a discussion 

of issues related to groups, see the Gaining Experience in Participating in Web 2.0 

Communities section below.) 

An early decision was made to enable the “blog this” functionality, which has facilitated the 

inclusion of LC’s photos into personal blogs and Web pages and further increased the 

visibility of specific pictures. Some meaning can be lost when images are separated from 

their provenance and collection context. They potentially lose the associations to creators, 

subjects, and provenance-related images that shape their meaning because the full 

descriptions rarely travel with the images into new venues. On the other hand, using the 

“blog this” feature automatically provides a citation and link back to the source photos on 

Flickr where the fuller description is available. We are able to track usage of this type 

through various Internet search strategies. Initially photos were used to illustrate posts 

announcing the discovery of the Library’s account on Flickr. As the novelty of our account 

16
has worn off, we now find these historical photos used for a variety of creative purposes—a 

photo of two World War II nurses illustrate a blog post on giving blood; a half-built 

skyscraper announces a trip to New York City; a picture of a 2-story high stack of paper 

outside a 1940s paper mill adds a humorous take on a judicial order regarding access to data. 

Creating a new life for these wonderful old photos has been a direct result of providing these 

pictures in a venue that makes it easy to share and integrate, mix past and present, and we 

hope, contributes to a better informed public. 

Referral Traffic to the Library’s Web Site 

One of the questions we are frequently asked is to what extent did this project raise or lower 

traffic to the Library’s Web site? Visits to LC Web pages originating from Flickr in the first 

five months of 2008 rose over 2,000% -- probably an indicator that traffic to the Library’s 

Web site originating from Flickr was relatively low prior to pilot launch. Of greater interest is 

the data that indicates that in 2008 the Flickr pilot had a positive effect on the traffic to the 

Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), both in terms of the total catalog and 

specifically for the two collections placed on Flickr. We looked at traffic to the collections in 

total, as well as traffic to the unique items placed on Flickr. While other factors may have 

contributed to the rise in the use of the catalog (such as the announcement of a new Abraham 

Lincoln inauguration photo in January 2008), the Flickr pilot was the most likely variable 

that could account for these increases. 

Full details of the analysis can be found in Appendix E, but here are the highlights: 

• Average monthly visits to all PPOC Web pages rose 20% over the five month period 

for the months of January through May 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. 

• Total views/downloads of image files of the color FSA/OWI collection items that 

were placed on Flickr rose approximately 13% for the period January through May 

2008, when compared to the same time period in 2007. 

• Total views/downloads of image files of the specific Bain collection items that were 

placed on Flickr rose approximately 60% for the period January through May 2008, 

when compared to the same time period in 2007. We think that rate may be higher for 

Bain photos than for FSA/OWI photos because we are continuing to load Bain photos 

each week, there are more of them, and more history detective work is leading people 

to the higher resolution images on the Library's Web site. 

Gaining a Better Understanding of Social Tagging and Community 

Input 

Flickr provides three ways for users to react to posted photos: tags, free-form comments, and 

17
notes applied to the pictures themselves. As discussed above, the major search engines index 

this user-generated content, so they provide extra weighting in keyword queries and their 

value for discovery extends beyond the Flickr universe. Following our weekly upload of 

photos, avid contributors add new tags and comments with surprising speed; it’s not unusual 

to see new tags appear within minutes of uploading new images. 

Tags 

One of the easiest ways for Flickr members to interact with the photographs is to contribute 

tags. In the Flickr context, tags are “keywords or labels that you add to a photo to make it 

easier to find later.”8

 Flickr limits the number of tags that can be added to each photo to 75. 

The tag characters can be in any alphabet: Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc. Tags are 

typically entered with all lowercase letters, but uppercase letters can be used. Tags can be 

single words or characters, or can be multi-word phrases such as “telephone wires,” 

“Lancaster County,” and “john vachon.” No distinctions are made between tags that identify 

creators, places, time periods, genre, format, subject (of and about), or general associations 

(reminds me of ...). Flickr tags, like comments and notes, are indexed by the major search 

engines so their value to increasing discovery and retrieval extends beyond the Flickr Web 

site. 

At the time of original upload, each photo included only 3 tags: one ‘regular’ tag (“Library of 

Congress”) and two machine tags to correlate the LC and Flickr photographs through 

identification numbers (see Technical Issues above). All other tags on the photos were added 

by the community. Anyone can see the entire set of tags on our account at 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/alltags/. A tag cloud of the 150 most 

popular tags is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/tags/. It’s 

important to note that for the purposes of this pilot, we took a very “hands off” approach to 

the tags, other than to check for blatantly inappropriate content. On a few occasions, Flickr 

members commented (or sent us Flickrmail) that they found a tag offensive and asked for its 

removal. There were exceptionally few tags that fell below a level of civil discourse 

appropriate to such an online forum—a true credit to the Flickr community. We did not 

correct spelling or syntax, or remove tags that appeared to be of little or no value to anyone 

but the tagger. We did delete or spell-correct tags that members had copied from the LC 

provided description, when additional information from Flickr members revealed that those 

words had misspellings or other errors. Some tags that would not typically be provided by 

Library catalogers are obviously more important in a social media site like Flickr, where 

 

8

“Help/FAQ/Tags” on http://www.flickr.com/help/tags/.

18
photos may be sought out for reuse based on such attributes as predominate colors. 

As mentioned previously, the high level of public interest in the account was unexpected. 

What was especially surprising, however, was that an analysis of the 59,193 tags added 

through May 13, 2008 revealed that 40% of these tags were added by a small group of 10 

“power taggers” (defined as taggers who provided over 3,000 tags each). Some people really

like to tag; one account holder was responsible for over 5,000 tags. A few statistics provide a 

sense of the general level of activity. As of October 23, 2008: 

• There were 67,176 community added tags (as compared to 10.4 million views); 

• 14,472 (21%) were unique9 tags; 

• 4,548 of the 4,615 photos have at least one community-provided tag; 

• 9 photos had reached 75 tags (and people commented that they were disappointed 

they could not add more tags on those photos) 

• 2,518 unique taggers had participated 

• More than 500 Flickr members supplied only one tag. 

Using the Flickr API to download the entire set of tags added to our account, we were able to 

analyze the types of tags added by the Flickr community through May 13, 2008.10 Given the 

amount of data, we decided to draw representative samples from each of the two sets of 

photographs. Beginning with the start of the photostream, every 10th photo was selected for 

analysis until the target number of 100 sample records (50 from each set) was reached. 

Photos earlier in the photostream are more heavily tagged so this provided a mix of heavily 

and lightly tagged photos. The FSA/OWI and Bain sets were analyzed separately to 

determine whether the types of tags added to the sets were different in any way, and to 

understand if the difference in the fullness of the LC-supplied descriptions had any impact on 

tagging behavior. (The MARC catalog records for the FSA/OWI photos included 

significantly more subject/genre terms than those for the Bain photos. See Appendix D for a 

comparison). The analysis categories assigned to the tags are: 

I. LC description-based (words copied from the Library-provided record): e.g., titles, 

names, subjects, etc. 

II. New descriptive words (words not present in the Library-provided description): 

o Place: e.g., cities, counties, countries, natural feature names 

o Format (physical characteristics of the original photos). Sample tags: LF, large 

format, black and white, bw, transparencies, glass plate 

o Photographic technique. Sample tags: shallow depth of field

 

9

 The unique tag count reats as a single tag terms that vary only in spacing between characters or use of 

uppercase and lowercase letters. 

10 Analysis performed by Colleen Candrl. 

19
o Time period. Sample tags: wartime, WWII, 1912

o Creator name: e.g., photographer’s name 

III. New subject words (words not present in the Library-provided description): 

o Image (items seen in the image itself). Sample tags: cables, trees, apples, windows, 

hat, yellow

o Associations/symbolism (phrases and slogans evoked by the image). Sample tags:

Rosie the riveter, Norman Rockwell, We can do it!

o Commentary (revealing the tagger’s value judgments). Sample tags: Sunday best,

proud, dapper, vintage.

o Transcription (transcribing words found in items such as signs, posters, etc., within 

the photo) 

o Topic (terms that convey the topic of the photo). Sample tags: architecture, navy, 

baseball, story

o Humor (tags intended to be humorous rather than descriptive) Sample tags: UFO, 

flying saucer

IV. Emotional/aesthetic responses: (personal reactions of the tagger). Sample tags: wow, 

pretty, ugly, controversial 

V. Personal knowledge/research (tags that could only have been added based on 

knowledge or research by the tagger, and that could not have been gleaned solely 

from the description provided or examination of the photo): For example, the tag 

murder used on a portrait of someone who was later murdered or tags added for the 

specific county when that information was not part of the description. 

VI. Machine tags (added by the community not Library-supplied): e.g., geotags and 

Iconclass tags 

VII. Variant forms (representing terms already tagged but in a different form, such as 

synonyms (e.g., WW2, WWII, World War II, worldwarii) or plural/singular 

differences (e.g., transparency/transparencies) 

VIII. Foreign language (tags in foreign languages/scripts, whether they are translations of 

English-language tags, or new tags) 

IX. Miscellaneous (tags that are not readily understood, that provide corrections to LC 

descriptions or to other taggers (e.g., notpeaches), or tags later removed 

Assigning tags to categories was challenging, and some tags did not fall into a single 

category. We decided up to three type categories for each tag. For example, when the 

primary tag type was “LC description-based,” a secondary type was also selected so that 

conclusions could be drawn about the kinds of “LC description-based” words that Flickr 

members selected to place in the tags. One category was always considered secondary--

“Variants” by definition were always a different representation of information already found 

in another tag type category. 

20
FSA/OWI Sample Analysis

Total tags in sample: 991; Tags per photo: 19.8 

Two category types covered almost 80% of the tags supplied by the Flickr community in the 

FSA/OWI sample set: tags for what was seen in the images and tags repeated from the LC 

description. Although some of the additional categories beyond these two are wellrepresented in the secondary tag types, a large percentage of those came from Library 

descriptions as well (for example, all 70 of the secondary tags for creator names were from 

LC descriptions, 88% of the place names were from LC descriptions, 79% of image tags 

were from LC descriptions, and 98% of all time period tags were from LC descriptions). 

Table 1 

FSA/OWI Tag Types Primary Type Secondary Type Additional Type 

LC description-based 450 (45%) 0 0 

Image 336 (34%) 28 16 

Commentary 61 (6%) 9 3 

Personal knowledge/research 40 (4%) 0 2 

Topic 26 (3%) 26 9 

Transcription 15 (1%) 2 4 

Place 14 (1%) 161 9 

Associations/symbolism 13 (1%) 0 0 

Foreign language 8 (<1%) 0 0 

Format 7 (<1%) 2 0 

Miscellaneous 5 (<1%) 3 0 

Emotional/aesthetic response 4 (<1%) 7 1 

Time period 3 (<1%) 46 0 

Photographic technique 2 (<1%) 1 0 

Humor 1 (<1%) 0 0 

Creator name 0 (0%) 70 0 

Variant format 0 (0%) 69 113 

Total tags in sample 991 424 157 

 

Bain Sample Analysis

Total tags in sample: 1163; Tags per photo: 23.3 

21
As with FSA/OWI, the two top categories were for items seen in the image and repetition of 

LC description information. However, several other categories are represented in larger 

numbers than in the FSA/OWI sample. The “image” category overtaking “LC descriptionbased” can be explained by the fact that the Bain descriptions from Library catalog records 

lacked most of the detail found in the FSA/OWI descriptions (i.e., there was less data to 

repeat). The fact that there were more tags per photo and the presence of additional tag types 

might reflect Flickr tagger efforts to recognize the general lack of information and “step up to 

the plate” to add information that the Library itself had not provided. The larger number of 

foreign language tags (in several non-Latin scripts) reflects the international diversity found 

in the Bain photos. Like FSA/OWI, a large percentage of the secondary tag types were also 

repetitions of LC description information (e.g., 100% of the “Time period” secondary tags 

and 51% of the “Place” tags.) 

Table 2 

Bain Tag Types Primary Type Secondary Type Additional Type 

Image 292 (25%) 11 0 

LC description-based 271 (23%) 0 0 

Place 151 (13%) 29 0 

Commentary 117 (10%) 1 0 

Foreign language 87 (7%) 4 0 

Topic 62 (5%) 12 1 

Personal knowledge/research 50 (4%) 2 0 

Associations/symbolism 29 (2%) 3 0 

Time period 24 (2%) 53 0 

Format 22 (2%) 6 0 

Miscellaneous 11(<1%) 1 1 

Transcription 14 (<1%) 2 0 

Photographic technique 6 (<1%) 0 1 

Emotional/aesthetic response 4 (<1%) 2 0 

Variant format 0 (0%) 147 14 

Creator name 0 (0%) 2 0 

Humor 0 (0%) 0 0 

Total tags in sample 1163 275 17 

A number of other observations can be made either from the sample analysis or the gut 

reactions of team members who examined the tags: 

22
• The issues commonly cited in comparisons of social tagging vs. assignment of 

controlled vocabulary terms are represented in the LC photos on Flickr. For example, 

we found some typographical errors (albeit in impressively low numbers), intended 

word mergers to overcome system syntax requirements (real or perceived), 

unintended de-linking of multi-word phrases and terms, overly broad terms that may 

not help to home in on a desired subset as the corpus on Flickr continues to grow 

(e.g., USA), inability to account for synonyms and homonyms. 

• Variant terms are generally not supplied by the same tagger, with the exception of 

some “power taggers” (defined in this report as individual taggers who provided 

more than 3,000 tags), who consciously provided variants (e.g., WWII, WW2, WWii) 

for concepts lacking a consistent vocabulary. 

• Although the LC-supplied descriptions had a heavy influence on Flickr members, it 

did not appear that taggers mined the community-supplied comments with any 

regularity. Given the richness of information found in the comments (see the 

Comments section below), this is a little disappointing. It is also clear that some 

members who provided significant numbers of comments on LC photos did not add 

tags. 

• While many of the tags represent terms that might help Flickr searchers find 

photographs, a number of tags seem to have value primarily to the original tagger 

(e.g., 6, 22, 7th, XX). There were also some tags that are helpful to a certain degree, 

but are not likely to be used for searching by other Flickr members (e.g., “not 

peaches,” a tag left in response to a “peaches” tag). 

• Given the emphasis of “place” in user-supplied tags, “geotagging” (specifying the 

location at which the image was taken using special tags called geotags) should be a 

popular activity, but the number of geotags remains significantly lower than 1%. 

The lack of an easy mechanism for taggers (other than the photo owner) to supply 

geotags within Flickr probably contributes to this dearth. Flickr has indicated 

interest in changing the functionality. 

• Do the community-supplied tags work to drive searchers/browsers to LC’s photos? 

The lack of a mechanism to easily correlate searches to community-supplied tags 

remains a problem when trying to answer this question. We know from blog posts 

23
and emails that some users access the photos directly from the photostream—in 

fact, they anxiously await the weekly load of new photos. What is not as clear, 

however, is the degree to which discovery is based on searches of the tags, 

descriptions, or groups other than for searchers who begin their searches outside of 

Flickr (through Google referrals, for example). 

Future Tag Analysis Interests 

A few suggestions for next steps with tags include: 

1. Examine the relationship between the tags and the keyword searches that resulted in traffic 

to our photos. As part of the account statistics reported to each Pro Account holder, data 

is provided on the referring Web sites that linked to individual photos in our Account. 

This data also shows what keywords were searched that resulted in views of/links to our 

photos. Unfortunately, at this time this data is not downloadable through an API, and the 

manner in which it is provided makes its extraction for analysis prohibitively labor 

intensive. It’s hoped that this data will be downloadable in the future, as a detailed 

analysis would yield insights on the keywords and tags that are useful in finding our 

photos. 

2. Compare tags used by Flickr members against terms/references found in vocabulary lists 

used primarily to describe photos at LC like Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) or 

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). An example of a non-LCSH/non-TGM 

tag is “Rosie the Riveter.” This tag was applied by users 73 times (LC had assigned 

“Women—employment” and “World War, 1939-1945”). Incorporating popular concepts 

or variants into our controlled vocabularies might be a way to derive benefit from this 

kind of user-generated data. 

3. Consider bringing tags into LC’s search environment, in some manner. The Powerhouse 

Museum has begun ingesting Flickr tags into their catalog along with the other tags and is 

marking them as originating from Flickr. They note on their site that they do not verify 

the 'accuracy' of these keywords. LC does not have a mechanism for easily incorporating 

these tags. Given the high proportion of tags based on information already in the LC 

records, the benefit of harvesting all the tags seems limited. But a few options could be 

explored: 

• Populate bibliographic records with tags, clearly labeled as uncontrolled index terms 

(e.g., MARC 653 fields) or notes. Some evaluation and weeding of terms would 

24
probably be necessary. It is likely that we would want to exclude tags in non-Latin 

scripts (MARC records can contain such scripts, but the need to place such terms in a 

separate field (MARC 880) with accurate script indicators may prove to be more 

trouble than it is worth). 

• If it proves too difficult to populate bibliographic records, an alternative could be to 

harvest tags from Flickr and park them on LC Web pages that would be crawled by 

the Library’s search engine (possibly using sitemap technology). Hits on terms might 

then re-direct the Web site searcher to the appropriate presentation in PPOC. This 

would be the most complicated approach to implement and should be approached as a 

pilot. 

 

4. As mentioned previously, we have rarely altered the tags on photos in the Flickr account. 

Should LC staff remove some of the less useful tags (e.g., those of dubious appropriateness 

or those that have been debunked by comments)? Should LC staff alter existing tags to assist 

searchers (e.g., correct typos)? Should LC staff monitoring valuable comments that provide 

new details assign additional tags based on the comments? Should LC delete some categories 

of tags on ‘full’ photos (75 tags assigned) to provide room for more relevant tags? We might 

also consider doing something with tags that other Flickr members have asked to have 

removed as inaccurate, such as “Dirigibles” and “Zeppelins” on a photo of a barrage balloon. 

Because these terms could still be useful as entry vocabulary for non-specialists, it might be 

useful to qualify misused terms, e.g., “Dirigible (similar)” or “Dirigible (related to).” 

Comments 

When publicizing the pilot, we noted that many of our old photos came to us with very little 

description and that additional description would be appreciated. The wealth of interaction 

and engagement that has taken place within the comments section has resulted in immediate 

benefits both for the Library and users of the collections. By the end of October 2008, 2,562 

unique Flickr accounts had added 7,166 comments on 2,873 photos (and the two set pages). 

A core group of about 20 “power commenters” returns regularly and provides corrected place 

names, more precise dates, event names, and fuller names for individuals previously 

identified only by surname. These Flickr “history detectives” contribute historical 

information, frequently supporting the information they offer by adding links to the New 

York Times archive, Wikipedia, and highly specialized Web sites devoted to specific 

relevant areas of interest such as military aviation, railroads, and sports history. Identification 

25
of these highly specialized Web sites may have lasting benefits as research resources for the 

future. 

It is particularly gratifying to see Flickr members provide all kinds of connections between 

the past and the present through discussions of personal histories including memories of 

farming practices, grandparents’ lives, women’s roles in World War II, and the changing 

landscape of local neighborhoods. As an example of the memories evoked by these images, 

see the reminiscences posted about the Sylvia Sweets Tea Room,11 especially the detailed and 

moving account from the restaurant owner’s family. 

Past and present are juxtaposed as individuals take a photo of the same location and then post 

their picture in the comments with accompanying information on how the location has 

changed or remains the same.12 These ‘then and now’ debates between members take place 

over locations; changes in purpose and architecture over time are noted with accompanying 

links to Mapquest and Google Earth providing exact addresses. 

Links and samples of the various types of exchanges occurring in the comments, (as well as 

notes and tags) are available in Appendix A. Two examples of extended interactions follow. 

Conversations are not uncommon in which multiple members contribute tags and comments 

over the course of several months. Flickr members added helpful tags to a photo called 

Weavers at Work13 to indicate that the women are blind, that they are making rugs at the 

New York Association for the Blind, and much more. Another user pointed out a “Byron of 

New York” photographer’s logo which provided a fundamental new piece of contextual 

meaning. We joined the conversation to encourage future viewers to check out the almost 

200 photos in the Byron Collection at the Museum of the City of NY that show related 

activities at the Blind Association. Four months later, yet another Flickr member called 

attention to the music device in the right corner asking “Is that a violano-virtuoso?” a

adding a link to a Wikipedia illustration as encouragement for others to join in the answ

nd 

er 

igures 2-5). 

 

(F

11 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178249475. 12 See “Lowell, Mass., street (LOC)” at http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179042198/ and 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179041336/ as examples of “then and now” interactions. 13 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163450764/

26
Figure 2. “Weavers at Work” 

Figure 3. Updated LC Descriptive Information in Flickr for “Weavers at Work” 

27
 

Figure 4. Comments on “Weavers at Work” Figure 5. Tags Added to “Weavers 

 at Work” 

28
Figure 6: “North American's P-51 Mustang Fighter is in service with Britain's Royal Air Force, N[orth] 

A[merican] Aviation, Inc., Inglewood, Calif.)14

An example of studied expertise in a subject area is revealed a conversation over an aircraft 

image that took place among several commenters over the course of two months. Figure 6, 

“North American's P-51 Mustang Fighter is in service with Britain's Royal Air Force, 

N[orth] A[merican] Aviation, Inc., Inglewood, Calif.” 15 sparked a discussion of whether this 

is in fact a P-51 or an airacobra aircraft. Flickr member bootload said, “The version you see is 

probably a P-51 B/C with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. It could also be a Mk1 (Mustang I/P51) which went into combat on 12 May '42. The bubble cockpit was introduced later in as a 

solution to the "poor rearward view. A quick solution was the "bulbous" Malcolm Hood and 

later replaced with a teardrop canopy so widly associated with later P-51's. Another 

commenter, antwharrington, replied, “It's a P51A, with the Allison V-1710 engine. The 

'bump' on top of the engine is the air intake, Merlin versions had the intake under the nose 

rather than on top. Allison-powered versions also had a three rather than four-blade prop 

and a shallower radiator scoop on the belly, but neither of those is easy to spot from this 

photo.” Two months later, a third member, fjcpictures added, “If memory serves, it was the 

 

14 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179916794/. 15 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179916794/. 

29
Brits who got the idea of using the RR Merlin in the P51 because they felt the Allison wasn't 

fast enough. One of their best ideas.” Two other members later weighed in on the merits of 

using the Rolls Royce Merlin engine.16

After verification by Library staff, the corrections and additions to captions and titles, and the 

identification of individuals being provided in this manner by the Flickr community is being 

slowly incorporated into PPOC records and then loaded back to Flickr records to keep them 

in synch. Changes began to appear the week of February 25th. By August, more than 500 

records in PPOC had been enhanced with new information and cited the Flickr Commons 

project as the source of the information that was changed or added. A photo once simply 

captioned, “Reid Funeral’

17 is now more fully described with the note: “Photo shows 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. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 

2008).” Other records might contain a new note field, such as “Current title devised by 

Library staff based on information provided by the source: Flickr Commons project, 2008.” 

By the end of July the team determined that it would benefit users of the Library’s catalog to 

alert them to corresponding Library Flickr pages. Though we are steadily enhancing PPOC 

records with new data over time, new user-generated information may be added to Flickr 

records at any moment as they are discovered by Flickr members. In addition, the personal 

experiences and reminiscences provided in the conversations between Flickr members in 

many cases enrich the appreciation of the photos, and that information best resides in its 

original context on Flickr. By August we added the appropriate Flickr URL to the “additional 

version available” field (MARC field 530) in relevant FSA/OWI and Bain PPOC records 

along with language suggesting that additional information might be available through the 

Flickr Commons project. 

 

16 Another example of detailed P51 expertise by other commenters: “P-51 "Mustang" fighter in flight, 

Inglewood, Calif. The "Mustang", built by North American Aviation, Incorporated, is the only American-built 

fighter used by the Royal Air Force of Great Britain).”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179075547/. 17 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2515741281/. 

30
Figure 7. Updated Library of Congress PPOC Record 

31
Notes (Annotations left directly on an image) 

Notes, when used by Flickr members with serious purpose, have proven to be a useful way to 

focus on specific items within a photo, such as the identity of persons in crowd scenes or 

words on signs and placards. For example, on “Parade of Olympic Athletes”18 one Flickr 

member looked at the larger image on the Library’s Web site and then provided notes 

transcribing the tiny text identifying each athlete on the signs on each automobile. Notes are 

also a means of adding grafitti-type messages and smart-aleck humor to the images. A 

proliferation of notes can be visually jarring, obscuring an image with nested squares and 

rectangles. Fortunately, mousing away from the image makes the notes disappear. Although 

some useful conversations have taken place between members in the notes, this is rare. More 

common is using a note to highlight something in the image and ask a question (or make a 

joke) about what it is. Of the three ways for users to interact with the photos on Flickr, the 

team considered this method the most problematic. We have received requests to turn off this 

option. 

Gaining Experience Participating in Web 2.0 Communities 

The Flickr pilot helped both the team and P&P staff gain experience with Web 2.0 

conventions and learn more about the photos through interactions with Flickr members via 

the comments and Flickrmail. A Web 2.0 persona is expected to be less formal than official 

face of the institution—we wrote the LC profile in a light tone and strove to sound personal 

in the responses added to the string of everyone else’s comments. These conversations 

between LC and Flickr users have differed from a standard one-on-one reference desk 

exchange in that they can take place over months and occur among multiple speakers. Staff 

monitoring the account have become more familiar with the rhythm of Web 2.0 exchanges 

and the value, in many cases, of letting Flickr members converse with each other rather than 

injecting Library comments or rejoinders immediately. At the same time, we have wanted to 

encourage repeat visits and so have felt it’s important to provide feedback and convey 

appreciation when new data is provided (such as thanking commenters for providing 

corrections and alerting them to our plan to fix the source data). P&P staff members have 

developed a “cookbook” to aid rotating staff on the types of interactions they are likely to see 

and options for responding, with encouragement to use their own voices. 

 

18 http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2332832827/

32
As we’ve moved forward, we’ve tried to strike a balance between the participation levels 

expected of community members and the limitations on resources available to allocate to the 

pilot. We’ve proceeded cautiously where accepting invitations that would add links from our 

account to other individual or group accounts. We have not, for example, followed the 

typical Flickr practice of reciprocating contacts—i.e., making contacts of everyone who 

made the Library a contact. We have accepted requests to add our photos to groups when we 

can confirm that they are public,19 which is one of the moderation tasks undertaken by P&P 

staff (See the Resources section). The need to be judicious in adding links from our accounts 

is one of the ways we differ from a standard individual account. Despite our informal tone 

on Flickr, we recognize that we are representing an institution in a venue designed for 

individuals. 

Recommendations and Conclusion 

Ten months into the pilot, the question looms whether to move from pilot project to program. 

Performance measures documented in this report illustrate how the project has been 

successful in achieving the objectives and desired outcomes of the Library’s strategic goals. 

The Flickr project increases awareness of the Library and its collections; sparks creative 

interaction with collections; provides LC staff with experience with social tagging and Web 

2.0 community input; and provides leadership to cultural heritage and government 

communities. The specific strategic goals are listed in Appendix B. 

Participating in Flickr can open many new avenues for making the Library’s visual 

collections useful as well as available. Additional resources would be needed to maximize 

the opportunities offered by Flickr and other Web 2.0 communities. But the overwhelmingly 

positive response to the digitized historical photographs in the Library’s Flickr account 

suggests that participation in The Commons should continue. To date, ten institutions20 from 

six nations are sharing selections from their photo archives and inviting the public to 

contribute information within the Commons’ specially designated Flickr space, and more are 

expected to follow in the coming months. Reports so far indicate that they are pleased with 

the additional exposure and the quality of the tagging their collections are receiving.21 Flickr 

 

19 See http://www.flickr.com/help/groups/ for more information on groups. 20 Commons members include: The Powerhouse Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, 

The Bibliothèque de Toulouse, George Eastman House, Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 

The National Media Museum, The National Maritime Museum, The State Library of New South Wales, The 

Library of Virginia, The Musée McCord Museum, and the Nationaal Archief. 21 Chen, Seb. “Commons on Flickr - a report, some concepts and a FAQ - the first 3 months from the 

Powerhouse Museum,” http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2008/07/21/commons-onflickr-a-report-some-concepts-and-an-faq-the-first-3-months-from-the-powerhouse-museum/. 

33
is now providing Commons users with the ability to limit their keyword searches to 

Commons collections and to view a tag cloud for the top 150 tags ascribed to photos in The 

Commons. 

The following outline covers the range of possible options for future participation (note: not 

all are mutually exclusive). 

(1) Walk away. Discontinue adding new photos and turn off interaction options to 

remove the need for moderation of photos already in Flickr. 

Pro: Annual savings of 1 FTE salary 

Con: Loss of good will and the opportunity to collect valuable information. 

(2) Continue “as is”--add 50 photos/week and moderate account 

Pro: Modest expense to expand to 1.5 FTE from current 1 FTE (shared by OSI 

and LS among 20 staff). Additional .5 FTE needed to keep up with the 

amount of user-generated content on a growing account—both in 

moderation and in changes to the catalog records (both in Flickr and PPOC). 

Con: Loss of opportunity to engage even more people with Library’s visual 

collections. Risk of losing attention from a Web 2.0 community that expects 

new and different content and interaction as often as possible. 

(3) Add new photo collections from P&P 

Pro: Attract new audiences with more diverse subjects, e.g., a selected set of 

treasures; black-and-white Great Depression photos (FSA/OWI); Civil War 

photos; child labor collection (Lewis Hine); color travel views of Europe; 

and Russian Empire (Prokudin-Gorskii). 

Con: Cost of .5 FTE additional staff (.25 FTE to prep, load, and update larger 

quantity of metadata and files and .25 FTE to moderate an account with 

more numerous photos). 

(4) Contribute photos and video content from many areas of LC 

Pro: Attract new audiences with more diverse subjects, e.g., American Folklife 

and Veterans History collections, exhibits such as the MacDowell Colony. 

Con: Cost of 1 FTE additional staff. (.25 FTE to prep and load more metadata and 

files, .25 FTE to moderate expanded account, and .5 FTE for project 

management and coordination among multiple divisions). 

(5) Increase analysis efforts 

Pro: Learn more about how the Web 2.0 interactions and networks are leading 

people to the Flickr photos. Analyzing the search queries could 

improve understanding of how people seek images and lead to 

improvements in LC cataloging practices. See the Tags section for 

detailed options with tag analysis. 

34
 Con: Cost of .5 FTE and library school intern. Flickr members may not want to 

be studied. Flickr may not be able to provide the search queries and referral 

statistics. 

(6) Create a virtual reference center or reading room for photos 

Pro: Increase awareness and use of LC collections by responding to comments 

proactively and organizing our Flickr photos by subject to make them even 

easier to find and interact with. For example, refer people to related 

resources that might be of interest even when they haven’t asked a specific 

question; geotag our photos; draw attention to mystery photos that need 

special assistance to decipher; acknowledge volunteer contributions 

formally to encourage continued involvement. 

Con: Cost of 1 FTE additional staff. (.25 FTE to prep and load more metadata and 

files, .5 FTE to moderate expanded account). 

(7) Showcase LC visitor experiences 

Pro: Create and administer a group where people could post photos taken while 

visiting the Library; build a virtual community of Library friends and attract 

new visitors to Capitol Hill because of what they see in Flickr. 

Con: Cost of .5 FTE additional staff to moderate the account. Organizational 

administrative responsibility could be unclear. 

At the start of the pilot, critics pointed out several risks often expressed as questions. 

Experience so far has not borne out their concerns. The skeptics wondered: Would the public 

conversation contribute to a better understanding of the photos or would fan mail, false 

memories, fake facts, and uncivil discourse obscure knowledge? Would a public-commercial 

partnership undermine the Library’s reputation for impartiality? Would the Library lose 

control of its collections? Would library catalogs and catalogers become obsolete? Would the 

need to moderate and respond to comments overwhelm all other work? Would history be 

dumbed-down? Would photographs be disrespected or exploited? Would entire collections 

be welcome or would selection of safe content border on censorship of historical 

information? 

Since the Library first launched its account the public has allayed many of the misgivings by 

lauding the rapid access to interesting photographs that could be enjoyed and used without 

restriction. News media complimented the Library for making publicly held information 

widely and freely available and also praised our openness to participatory cataloging. Fellow 

cultural heritage organizations quickly began to join Flickr’s Commons because ‘taking the 

pictures to the people’ resulted in reaching large new audiences. 

Increasing the ability to engage and connect with photos increases the sense of ownership 

35
and respect that people feel for these photos. As the Library considers strategies, 

technologies, and solutions to making our resources available, discoverable, and useful, 

lessons learned from this project provide guideposts to the type of experience that people 

would like to have with our collections, as well as informing Library decision-makers on the 

benefits of distribution beyond the walls of the loc.gov Web site. Using Flickr features and 

functionalities gave us experience with search and display capabilities currently beyond LC 

systems. We gained a deeper understanding of how users want to interact with our 

collections. Engaging with the public in Flickr also helped to identify how to manage the 

challenges of Web 2.0 participation: how to interact with users in ways that are less formal 

without diminishing the reputation of the institution; how to reconcile the inevitable loss of 

control over content with the recognition that we can significantly increase the reach of that 

content if people can access and interact with it in the communities in which they participate. 

Continuing the Flickr project would inform this ongoing conversation at the Library. It 

should come as no surprise, then, that the Flickr team recommends that this experiment in 

Web 2.0 cease to be characterized as a pilot and evolve to an expanded involvement in this 

growing community (and other appropriate social networking opportunities that may arise) as 

resources permit. The benefits appear to far outweigh the costs and risks. 

Figure 8. The Commons in Flickr

36
Appendix A: Examples of Flickr Interactions 

One of the best ways to understand Web 2.0 is to look at the interactions in comments, notes, 

and tags. The following examples are categorized to indicate the inventive and impressive 

range of engagement with historical images. People are ... 

• Contributing specialist knowledge

This photo of cars parked next to a huge haystack prompted people to comment on 

the shape of the stack, the reasons to store so much hay uncovered, and the spareness 

of old tires. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178331373/

In this photo of a parade of Olympic Athletes, many notes provide the text of the 

signs on the cars and on the windows. The debate over the location ended with a 

photo from another library that confirms the location. Another member corrected 

assumptions about a ‘trolley car’ in the photo to clarify that it’s really a cable car on 

the Broadway line of the Metropolitan Street Railway. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2332832827/

For this photo of women weavers, a Flickr user pointed out a photographer’s logo 

(bottom left): “Byron of New York,” which provided a fundamental new piece of 

information and connections to many related photos. Four months later, the music 

device in the right corner caught attention with a new question, “Is that a violanovirtuoso?” and a link to a Wikipedia illustration was added to encourage others join in 

the answer. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163450764/

• Adding value through links, comparison, notes 

This rather plain photo of a barn from news photos taken between 1910 and 1915 sent 

Flickr participants fishing in the New York Times archive to link the image to the 

event alluded to in the title (“Jones Barn where dynamite was found”). An additional 

commenter provided links to archival holdings that could shed further light on the 

story. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163452890/

Flickr members have sent in photographs of how a place looks today, making thenand-now comparisons possible. A mill in Lowell, Mass.: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179041336/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcarlson/2209255147/

Railroad cars and factory buildings in Lawrence, Mass.: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178249693/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgd73/2208349678/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/prybylphotos/1208753606/

37
• Sparking memory and conversations about history 

This photo was enriched with town history. The original FSA/OWI agency caption 

was “Industrial buildings and a town in Mass., possibly Brockton.” In the comments, 

one account holder noted that she had spoken to her father who had worked in 

factories in Brockton. He identified this site as a shoe factory. Other members 

confirmed the address. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179042924/

Here’s an example of an account holder whose grandmother was a real life riveter for 

American Aviation in California. She placed a drawing of her grandmother in the 

comments section. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179930812

• Sparking creativity and memory 

Flickr members learn about the photographs by imitating or recreating the scene 

today. Brownpau and his wife re-enacted the photo taken in front of Union Station in 

Washington, DC. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179918784/

Painting a plane: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178436353/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ataricharm/2232599895/

• Looking from all over the world and reflecting on related experiences

Flickr member Catmandu identifies herself as an ignorant Australian who wonders 

what you do at a Bull Moose convention. Another user points to a source of 

information, and she comes back with interesting reflections on women’s suffrage in 

various countries. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163955672/

• Being prompted to new awareness of history through the photos and the 

conversations and investigations they spark 

After seeing a 1943 photo showing an African American woman working on a dive 

bomber, Flickr member Kenorland observed “Okay so they never taught us that black 

women worked as Rosie. What a crime of omission! So cool to see this.” 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179038448/

A photo of Japanese Americans at Manzanar generated a long conversation about old 

photos going beyond nostalgia, why would people smile in such a circumstance, and 

more. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179117431/

38
• Looking closely 

Commenters found plenty of information to question in the photo and in the original 

caption, including the fact that the photo shows home plate, not second base. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163461044/

Careful observers noted the stunt photography aspect of this auto polo scene, and also 

linked the image to sources showing that the sport itself was real. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2477625961/

• Helping each other to understand the images and data we provided, and the 

historical context of the original descriptions

In this case, one commenter questioned the use of the word “girl” in the caption. 

Flickr member Caffeinatedlibrarian helped point out that the word was in the original 

caption. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179922510/

• Offering visual humor

The photos inspire wit. This commenter clearly saw something different in a 1942 

photo of a Tennessee Valley Authority facility in Alabama. The comment: “I think 

this was an early conceptualization of the Internet.” 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179139231

39
Appendix B: Strategic Goals and the Flickr Project 

The Flickr Project serves numerous strategic goals at the Library of Congress. The mapping 

below highlights four project features that increase awareness of the Library and its 

collections; spark creative interaction with collections; provide LC staff with experience with 

social tagging and Web 2.0 community input; and provides leadership opportunities to 

cultural heritage and government communities. The Strategic Goals quoted below are from 

the Library of Congress Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2008-2013,22 the Office of Strategic 

Initiatives Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2008-2013 (OSI),

23 and the Library Services 

Strategic Goals, Strategic Objectives, Performance Goals, Activities, and Performance 

Measures (LS).

24

 

I. The Flickr Pilot increases awareness of cultural heritage and educational resources 

by sharing photographs from the Library’s collections with people who enjoy images 

but might not visit the Library’s own Web site. Taking the pictures to the people attracts 

new audiences and maximizes the use of visual collections. 

Library Outreach Goal: Increase awareness of the value and utility of the Library. 

(...increasing and maximizing use of the Library’s resources and services by the 

Congress and the public will make it possible to improve learning and creativity.) 

Outcome 2: Maximized use of the Library. 

Strategy: Ensure that the Library’s resources and services make full use of changing 

technologies.

Performance Goal: Collaborative programs with external entities to increase use of 

specific Library programs, resources and services. 

LS Goal 3: Deepen the general understanding of American cultural, intellectual, and 

social life and of other peoples and nations. 

Strategic Objective: 3.A.: Present our collections to new and broader audiences. 

OSI Goal: Enhancing access and usage of the Library’s collections and services.

Strategic Objective: Increased use of and seamless access to digital content and services. 

22 http://www.loc.gov/about/strategicplan/2008-2013/StrategicPlan07-Contents_1.pdf 23 http://www.loc.gov/staff/osi/about/OSI_StrategicPlan.pdf 24 http://www.loc.gov/staff/ls/planning/080608LSGoalObjGoalAct.pdf

40
Outcome: Increased usage and awareness of digital content and services by target user. 

communities. 

Outcome: Expanded channels for delivering content and services. 

II. The Flickr Pilot sparks creative interaction with LC’s collections. 

Library Customer Goal: Improve our customers’ experiences in seamlessly finding and 

using Library resources. (...improving the customers’ ability to access what they need quickly 

and in the most seamless way, but also ... informing public discourse and understanding about the 

world in which we live.)

Outcome 1: Increased use of the Library’s digital resources to promote knowledge and 

better understanding. 

Library Outreach Goal: Increase awareness of the value and utility of the Library. 

(...increasing and maximizing use of the Library’s resources and services by the Congress and the 

public will make it possible to improve learning and creativity.)

Outcome 3: Improved quality of life-long learning and creativity through use of Library 

services and resources. 

Library Content Goal: Expand and preserve in accessible form a unified and universal 

body of knowledge and creativity. (...stimulating creativity, generating content, and developing 

descriptive data to ensure that quality collections are available to Congress, the nation, and the world.)

Outcome 4: Increased creative and intellectual output that contributes to the body of 

knowledge available to the Congress and other constituencies.

LS Goal 2: Provide the most effective methods for connecting the Library user to our 

collections. 

Strategic Objective 2.B: Adopt technology that makes the collections more accessible to 

users. 

Performance goal: 2.B.4: Employ new technologies to deliver collections to users.

OSI Goal: Enhancing access and usage of the Library’s collections and services. 

Strategic Objective: Increase use of and seamless access to digital content and services. 

Outcome: Increased usage and awareness of digital content and services by target user 

communities. 

41
III. The Flickr Pilot helps LC staff gain a better understanding of how social tagging 

and community input could benefit both the Library and users of the collections. We 

can explore the potential of user-generated content and tap expert community contributions 

to describe the content of special collections that we have the resources to digitize but not 

subject index. 

Library Customer Goal: Improve our customers’ experiences in seamlessly finding and 

using Library resources. (...improving the customers’ ability to access what they need 

quickly and in the most seamless way, but also ... informing public discourse and 

understanding about the world in which we live.) 

Outcome: Improved customer’s ability to get what they need, when they need it, with 

minimal effort. 

LS Goal 2: Provide the most effective methods for connecting the Library user to our 

collections. 

Strategic Objective: Determine the bibliographic description framework needed in the 

digital era. 

Performance Goal 2.A.2: Increase the accessibility of the Library’s special collections 

through bibliographic description or finding aids. 

OSI Goal: Enhancing access and usage of the Library’s collections and services. 

Strategic Objective: Increase use of and seamless access to digital content and services. 

Outcome: Increased usage and awareness of digital content and services by target user 

communities. 

IV. The Flickr Pilot can lead the way for other institutions. Collaborating directly with 

Flickr on the pilot proposal and licensing issues resulted in a new specially designated area of 

Flickr (The Commons) for collecting institutions to contribute items and state the rights 

information that they believed, but could not warrant, to be true. 

 

Library Content Goal: Expand and preserve in accessible form a unified and universal 

body of knowledge and creativity. (...stimulating creativity, generating content, and 

developing descriptive data to ensure that quality collections are available to Congress, 

the nation, and the world.)

Outcome 4: Increased creative and intellectual output that contributes to the body of 

knowledge available to the Congress and other constituencies.

42
LS Goal 4: Provide leadership for the library community. 

Strategic Objective 4C: Develop new tools and standards for librarianship. 

Performance Goal: 4.C.1.: Lead the development of national and international standards 

that promise to enhance library services ... allows wide sharing of content and data. 

OSI Goal: Enhancing access and usage of the Library’s collections and services. 

Strategic Objective: Increase use of and seamless access to digital content and services. 

Outcome: Expanded channels for delivery content and services. 

Strategy: Collaborate with units across the institution, external technology and content 

partners, and other Federal agencies to target and reach the Library’s core online 

audiences. 

43
Appendix C: Media Coverage

Blogs, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Web Sites 

Braiker, Brian. “Flickr Helps the Library of Congress.” Newsweek.com (24 Jan. 2008). 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/103198/Newsweek. 

Catone, Josh. “Library of Congress Teams with Flickr.” ReadWriteWeb.com (16 Jan. 2008). 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/library_of_congress_teams_with_flickr.php

Chan, Wade-Hahn. “Library of Congress Tests Web 2.0 Photo Archive.” FCW.Com (24 Mar. 2008). 

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/152025-1.html.

Riley, Duncan. “Flickr Takes Historical Imagery To The Masses.” TechCrunch.com (16 Jan. 2008). 

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/16/flickr-takes-historical-imagery-to-the-masses/. 

Fost, Dan. “Killer Statue- Psyched about the Site!” New York Times (12 Mar. 2008). 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/arts/artsspecial/12social.html. 

Gilbertson, Scott. “Flickr Taps User Tags to Organize Library of Congress Images.” Wired.com (16 

Jan. 2008). http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/flickr-taps-use.html. 

Glen, Joshua. “Marching off to...” Boston Globe (3 Feb. 2008): p. C4. 

Hunt, Tara. [Telephone interview for “The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to 

Build Your Business.”] (17 Apr. 2008). 

Jardin, Xeni. “Rosie the Riveter: one of many finds in that LoC Flickr set.” BoingBoing.net

 (18 Jan. 2008). http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/18/rosie-the-riveter-on.html

Kaplan, Rebecca. “Flickr, Library of Congress find something in 'Common'.” USA Today (28 Jul. 

2008): p. 4D. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-07-27-flickr-commons_N.htm. 

Kramer-Smyth, Jeanne. SAA 2008: Revealing Collections at the Web’s Surface. Spell-Bound blog 

post, Sept. 2, 2008, http://www.spellboundblog.com/2008/09/02/saa2008-revealing-archivalcollections-at-the-webs-surface-session-102/

Lieberman, Michael. “The Library of Congress Hits the Jackpot on Flickr.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

Reader Blogs (21 Jan. 2008). 

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/bookpatrol/archives/129927.asp?from=blog_last3. 

Mihm, Stephen. “Everyone's a historian now: How the Internet - and you - will make history deeper, 

richer, and more accurate.” Boston Globe (25 May 2008). 

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/25/everyones_a_historian_now/. 

Sarah. “ Color photos from the 1930's & 40's.” Signal vs. Noise (37signals.com) (4 Apr. 2008). 

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/965-color-photos-from-the-1930s-40s. 

Seligson, Joelle. “Web 2.0 Partnership Opens Doors for Public Collections.” AVISO [American 

Association of Museums newsletter] (1 Mar. 2008). 

44
http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/aama/issues/2008-03-01/. 

Shankland, Stephen. “Flickr to host Library of Congress photos.” CNet News (16 Jan. 2008) (article 

and podcast) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9852087-

39.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5. 

“My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven.” Techmeme.com (16 Jan. 2008). 

http://www.techmeme.com/080116/p76#a080116p76

Terdiman, Daniel. “Flickr brings tagging to vintage images.” CNet News (17 Jan. 2008). 

http://news.cnet.com/Flickr-brings-tagging-to-vintage-images/2100-1025_3-6226687.html. 

“Uncle Sam Needs You.” Newsweek (4 February 2008); p. 4. 

Yehle, Emily. “Flickr Offers Surfers Peek at Library’s Photo Collection.” Roll Call (17 Jan. 2008). 

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/53_80/news/21640-1.html?type=pf.

Podcasts, Radio, and Television 

Boyd, Clark. “WTP 186: Taliban Threatens Mobile Masts, LOC Does Flickr, and Blogging WWI 

Redux.” PRI’s The World: Technology, [a BBC World Service news program] (19 Mar. 2008). 

http://www.theworld.org/pod/tech/WTP-podcast186.mp3.

Falls, Sarah. “Interview #6: Helena Zinkham and Michelle Springer: Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, Flickr pilot project.” ArtTECHtonic [a virtual “session” for ARLIS-NA 

2008 annual conference] (21Apr. 2008). http://arttechtonic.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/interview6-helena-zinkham-and-michelle-springer-library-of-congressflickr-project/. 

Inskeep, Steve. “Library of Congress Looks for Help on Photo Labels.” Morning Edition, National 

Public Radio (21 Jan. 2008). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18279042. 

Nurenberg, Gary. “Library of Congress Gets Online Help.” WUSA9.com. (26 Feb. 2008). 

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=68985. [Broadcast on WUSA 9]. 

“Photo Share Podcast #21: Flowers, Prizes and The LOC.” photosharepodcast.com (21 May 2008). 

http://www.photosharepodcast.com/2008/05/photo-share-podcast-21-flowers-prizes-and-the-loc/. 

And “Photo Share Podcast #22: Billboards and News.” photosharepodcast.com (27 May, 2008). 

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Scobel, Robert. “Getting USA's Treasured Images Onto Flickr.” Scobelizer/ Fast TV.com (October 2, 

2008). http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/getting-usa-s-treasured-images-onto-flickr . 

Scobel, Robert. “Visiting the Library of Congress and Meeting the Flickr Team.” (17 Sept. 2008).

Scobelizer/ Fast TV.com. http://scobleizer.com/2008/09/17/visiting-the-library-of-congress-andmeeting-the-flickr-team/. 

Weinberg, David . “Knowledge, Noise and the End of Information.” Smithsonian Institution 

Libraries. (September 16, 2008). http://www.sil.si.edu/lectures_40th_Weinberger.html.

Society of American Archivists. “American Archives Month October 2008 Public Relations Kit.” 

(October 2008); p. 12. http://www.archivists.org/archivesmonth/AAM2008/2008_AAM_Kit.pdf. 

45
Appendix D: Catalog Records for FSA/OWI and Bain 

The catalog records supplied by the Prints and Photographs Division for use as descriptions 

in Flickr for FSA/OWI photos had considerably more information than the records supplied 

for the Bain photos. A detailed comparison of the types of information in the Libraryprovided metadata can assist tag analysis. The information elements in the records were 

encoded in the MARC21 format. 

FSA/OWI 

(N=1,616 records) 

Bain 

(N=1,500 records) 

Name headings 

MARC 100/700 (personal) 

MARC 110/710 (corporate) 

MARC 111/711 (meeting) 

1,557 

0 

0 

0 

1,50025

0 

Names as subjects 

MARC 600 (personal) 

MARC 610 (corporate) 

MARC 611 (meeting) 

4 

82726

2127

1 

0 

0 

Topical subjects 

MARC 650 472528 3 

Geographic subjects 

MARC 651 100 0 

Uncontrolled terms 

MARC 653 0 90229

Genre/Form 

MARC 655 7330 1,50031

 

25 All for Bain News Service 

26 Most for railroads, US military branches, companies 

27 Most for events, e.g., Vermont State Fair 28 22% from LCSH (virtually all for World Wars, ethnic groups (e.g., Norwegian Americans), or holidays); 77% 

from LC Thesaurus of Graphic Materials. 

29 Most for places or types of sports 

30 All from TGM 

31 All for glass negatives, from TGM 

46
Appendix E: Traffic to the Library’s Web Site 

Team members are frequently asked what effect this project had on traffic to the Library’s 

Web site. Did it increase traffic or perhaps reduce traffic? We performed several metric 

assessments that confirm that the Flickr pilot had a positive effect on the traffic to the Prints 

and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), measured by views, visits, and downloads,32 both 

in terms of the total catalog and specifically for the two collections placed on Flickr. In 

addition, data supports that new audiences are coming to the LC Web site as a result of this 

pilot. Various factors may have contributed to the rise in the use of the catalog (a new 

Lincoln photo in the LC collection was announced in January 2008, for example), but it is 

highly likely that the Flickr pilot was a strong factor in these increases. 

The construction of the URLs of the various pages and files found within the Prints and 

Photograph Online Catalog (PPOC) complicated the metrics analysis process. The PPOC is 

constructed of various Web pages: 

• “About the collection” information 

• Item level bibliographic information 

• Information on how to order copies 

• Digital item display pages (from which higher resolution JPEG and uncompressed 

archival TIFF files can be downloaded), and 

• Search and search results pages.

An effort was made to count views and visits to each digital item display page, the 

bibliographic information page and the obtain copies page, and to exclude search results 

pages from the Web pages counted. 

In order to determine effects of the pilot, we analyzed the following data for the months of 

January through May in 2008 and the same period in 2007: 

• Web page views and visits to the digital item display pages, the bibliographic 

information pages and the “obtain copies” pages (excluding the “about the collection” 

pages and search results pages) for the entire PPOC catalog 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files for the entire PPOC catalog 

• Unique TIFF and JPEG files viewed/downloaded from the entire PPOC catalog 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files for the entire FSA/OWI color 

collection 

 

32 A page view refers to an individual viewing a single Web page. A site visit refers to an individual accessing 

any page, or group of pages, on the Library’s site prior to leaving for another site. 

47
• Unique TIFF and JPEG files viewed/downloaded from the entire FSA/OWI color 

collection 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files from the entire Bain collection, the 

subset of Bain photos loaded onto Flickr, and those not loaded onto Flickr 

• Unique TIFF and JPEG files views/downloaded from the entire Bain collection, the 

subset of Bain photos loaded onto Flickr, and those not loaded onto Flickr. 

• Visits to the Library’s Web site originating from the Flickr.com domain 

• Page views and visits to the five Library Web pages most frequently cited in our 

Flickr profile page and in various blog posts about the project. 

Percentage of total PPOC views and visits 

In order to measure the effect of the Flickr pilot on the entire Prints and Photographs catalog 

(PPOC), we compared month over month Web page views and site visits within the PPOC 

catalog for the period January through May of 2007 and 2008.33 Analysis indicated that the 

percentage of Web pages viewed within the entire PPOC catalog rose for each of the first 

five months in 2008 when compared to the same month in 2007 (see tables below). The 

monthly views of PPOC Web pages for the months of January through May 2008 compared 

to the same period in 2007 showed an average monthly increase of 12% over the five month 

period. The percentage change of visits told a similar story-- an average monthly increase of 

20% over the five month period. 

Percentage Change of Page Views by 

Month, 2008 over 2007

January 15.2% 

February 14.5% 

March 6.6% 

April 10.6% 

May 12.9% 

Average rise 12.0% 

Percentage Change of Visits by Month, 

2008 over 2007

January 27.0% 

February 21.5% 

March 8.0% 

April 23.2% 

May 24.3% 

Average rise 20.8% 

Views/Downloads of FSA/OWI color and Bain collection TIFF and JPEG files 

We were interested in the answer to this question: For the pictures we’d uploaded to Flickr, 

did views/downloads of the TIFF and JPEG files from the FSA/OWI and Bain collections 

rise or fall? The answer to this query was more straightforward for the color FSA/OWI 

 

33 An effort was made to exclude search results pages from the PPOC HTML pages and only count the digital 

item display, the bibliographic information pages and the “obtain copies” pages (not the “about the collection” 

pages). Our metrics counting was based on a unique string within the URLs of PPOC pages. 

48
photos, as the entire collection (approximately 1,600 photos) was uploaded onto Flickr. The 

analysis of Bain collection data had an added element of complexity-- only a relatively small 

set of Bain photos was loaded onto Flickr (2,100 out of approximately 44,000). For the Bain 

collection, we needed two analyses: an assessment of the effect on the specific photos that 

were uploaded and an additional analysis on the collection as a whole, to see if there had 

been any supplementary rise or fall in downloads of the non-Flickr Bain photos. We also 

examined unique views/downloads vs. total downloads to help determine if some files were 

downloaded multiple times, while other files were only viewed/downloaded once. 

Analysis of the data reveals that downloads rose on every parameter for both collections in 

2008 when compared to 2007. 

FSA/OWI Color 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files of the color FSA/OWI collection rose 

13.6% for the period January through May 2008, when compared to the same time period 

in 2007. Downloads of unique files rose 4.6%. 

Bain 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files across the entire Bain collection rose 

34.3% in 2008 for the period January through May, when compared to the same time 

period in 2007. Downloads of unique files rose 30.6%. 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files of the Bain collection items that were 

placed on Flickr rose 58.9% for the period January through May 2008, when compared to 

the same time period in 2007. Downloads of unique files rose 51.9%. 

• Total views/downloads of TIFF and JPEG files of the Bain collection items that were not 

placed on Flickr rose 30% in 2008 for the period January through May, when compared 

to the same time period in 2007. Downloads of unique files rose 27.6%. 

o In the same time period the 2,100 photos that were added to Flickr in 2008 

experienced a 58.3% rise in instances of downloads in 2008. 

o It’s interesting to note that the unique files that were viewed/downloaded in 2007 

that were not placed on Flickr in 2008 actually saw a 30% drop in 

views/downloads in 2008, while total views/downloads of unique files not on 

Flickr rose 30%. This indicates that different files were being viewed/downloaded 

in 2008 than were downloaded in 2007.

New traffic to LC Web pages from Flickr 

We also know that as a result of the pilot, traffic from Flickr to the Library’s Web site 

49
increased dramatically. That conclusion is based on measuring visits that originated from the 

Flickr domain in the first five months of 2008 and comparing those numbers to the same time 

period in 2007. There was an average rise of 2,205% with the majority of the traffic coming 

in January and February (see table below). 

Percentage Change of traffic coming from 

Flickr by Month, 2008 over 2007 

January 5,483% 

February 3,162% 

March 743% 

April 1,119% 

May 521% 

Average rise 2,205% 

 

50