National Library of Scotland finds Flickr

The National Library of Scotland has contributed one of the biggest ever collections of photographs and images to Flickr’s ‘The Commons’ – ensuring over 2000 of its archived
images become available world-wide.
The first collections released to the website include The Last Letter of Mary Queen of Scots, photographs of tenements on the Southside of Edinburgh taken in 1929, the order for the massacre of Glencoe and World War One official photographs from the Library’s Haig Collection.

Flickr is described as the best online photo management and sharing application in the world and enables the public to view, share, re-use, comment upon and tag images on their own social networking sites.

Flickr’s ‘The Commons’ highlights the hidden photographic archives of the world’s cultural and heritage organisations and encourages the public to contribute their knowledge to these collections. Currently, 44 other cultural organisations have added images to the website, including National Galleries of Scotland, the Imperial War Museum, The National Archives (UK), Brooklyn Museum, Library of Congress, the National Media Museum and US National Archives.

Gill Hamilton, Systems Librarian, National Library of Scotland, commented: “This is a fantastic resource for the general public – there’s no known copyright restrictions on Flickr ‘The Commons’ photos – so everyone has access to use these images for non-commercial purposes. Flickr Commons is a great way for National Library of Scotland to share its photographic collections with the world and we’re looking forward to adding to our Flickr Photostream throughout the coming year.”

The Library plans to add more collections to Flickr throughout the year and aims to share a total of 3000 images with the public by the end of 2010. You can see the NLS Flickr Photostream by clicking here.