Stumbled across a really interesting project earlier today: The Commons.
What a great idea. By putting their public photograph collections up on Flickr and then soliciting tagging by the universe of Flickr users, the Library of Congress is accomplishing two things at once: introducing a new audience to the wonderful objects in their collection and getting free metadata that will surely in aggregate improve discovery and thus use of the materials.
This was announced a week ago last Wednesday which means it’s been available for quite a while (at least in internet time). Nevertheless, it amazes me how much tagging there’s been on these images in just nine days. Sure there’s lots of bad spelling and poor word choice in the tags but with millions performing the work the price paid for even a particularly bad tag is negligible.
Bonus: these images are public domain so you can spice up your next presentation with a historical photo or two.