LC and flickr

One couldn't turn around online today without seeing a post on the Library of Congress flickr experiment today: Read Write Web, Shifted Librarian, eFoundations, Catalogablog, Digital Koans, etc, and of course on the LOC blog.

In case you've been under a rock, LC has put up 3,000 images of photographs from their Prints and Photographs division for which no rights restrictions are known to exist, and are asking folks to tag them to help in enriching the metadata. The pilot project is in a new area of flickr called "The Commons." LC has a GREAT FAQ on participation.

Three things stand out for me:

They have made use of a new rights statement "no known copyright restrictions," which they may or may not make available for other images uploaded to flickr.

They are interested in hearing from other cultural heritage institutions to gauge interest in other projects becoming part of The Commons.

This is a pilot, and they do not know how long they might keep the images on flickr. So, review and tag these while you can. They have other candidate collections in mind.