Photo by George

The Commons

Help us catalog the world’s public photo archives.

The Commons Help us catalog the world’s public photo archives.

Welcome!

The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives.

Please help make the photographs you enjoy more discoverable by adding tags and leaving comments. Your contributions and knowledge make these photos even richer*

A random sprinkling of our participating institutions...

  • Stockholm Transport Museum Commons
  • The Finnish Museum of Photography
  • Provincial Archives of Alberta
  • Vestfoldmuseene | Vestfold Museums
  • National Library of Norway
  • National Library of Sweden
  • Center for Jewish History, NYC
  • SALTOnline
  • Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland
  • State Library of Queensland, Australia
  • State Library of New South Wales collection
  • National Library of Scotland
  • National Museum of Denmark
  • UW Digital Collections
  • bibliothequedetoulouse
  • Swedish National Heritage Board
  • Musée McCord Museum
  • Université de Caen Basse-Normandie
  • Library Company of Philadelphia
  • The U.S. National Archives
  • California Historical Society Digital Collection
  • National Galleries of Scotland Commons
  • Mississippi Department of Archives and History
  • SMU Central University Libraries
  • Ljósmyndasafn Reykjavíkur / Reykjavík Museum of
  • LSE Library
  • NASA on The Commons
  • Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
  • Museum of Photographic Arts Collections
  • OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons
  • UA Archives | Upper Arlington History
  • Aalto University Library and Archive Commons
  • Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol
  • tyrrellhistoricallibrary
  • National Library of Ireland on The Commons

A Commons Sampler

3. Maman, kes on piinliku täpsusega jaapanipäraselt riides, tutvustab end ühel õhtusöögil ning leiab üllatusega, et tema võõrustajad on riietatud hoopis pooleldi Euroopa stiilis.
3. Maman, kes on piinliku täpsusega jaapanipäraselt riides,...
from National Archives of Estonia

German prisoners in France (LOC)
German prisoners in France (LOC)
from The Library of Congress

Portrait of Morton Robertson, date unknown
Portrait of Morton Robertson, date unknown
from Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol

15. Hanari Kura pere materiaalne õitseng.
15. Hanari Kura pere materiaalne õitseng.
from National Archives of Estonia

[General Leonard Wood & Wild Bill Donovan, manager, New York AL, at Polo Grounds, New York  (LOC)
[General Leonard Wood & Wild Bill Donovan, manager, New York...
from The Library of Congress

10. Andrjuša esitleb oma majesteetlikule emale oma abikaasat ning nende lapsi.
10. Andrjuša esitleb oma majesteetlikule emale oma abikaasat ning...
from National Archives of Estonia

Herb. Chas. Grant (LOC)
Herb. Chas. Grant (LOC)
from The Library of Congress

Spreading manure, 1906
Spreading manure, 1906
from Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol

May Peterson (LOC)
May Peterson (LOC)
from The Library of Congress

More about The Commons

A new way to share photos on Flickr

The Commons was launched on January 16 2008, when we released our pilot project in partnership with The Library of Congress. Both Flickr and the Library were overwhelmed by the positive response to the project! Thank you!

The program has two main objectives:

  1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
  2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!)

FAQ

I work for a cultural heritage institution that would like to be a part of The Commons. How do we do that?

Please let us know you're interested by registering here. It helps a lot if you let us know some background about your institution, and direct us to any online photo collections you already have.

How can I get involved?

We've already seen fantastic contribution from the Flickr membership. Your tags and conversations about the content in The Commons has been wonderful! The best way to get involved is to add a tag or two to the photos you see, and if you happen to know anything else about the subject, by all means add a comment.

What's "no known copyright restrictions?"

This new rights statement is being contained to the institutions participating in The Commons, at the account level. It is a requirement for participation in the program that institutions may rightly claim "no known copyright restrictions" on the content they share. More information.

*Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you're a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!
https://www.flickr.com/commons
www.flickr.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-18
134359
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:4OSAZUS6NOQQEV2EYXICU3TK5QPKTUXP
<urn:uuid:6e287886-5a2c-4b5e-b5c1-e41d1b2930bc>
2015-04-25T02:23:41Z
206.190.57.61
sha1:SZ42RIOXSQNNQFMRZ2ALFM5ODTZTF4I5
<urn:uuid:ff08f3e1-798a-4792-bed5-e93ee7449165>
https://www.flickr.com/commons
length
response
<urn:uuid:3c771a2d-44ae-4131-8572-ceb69c77ee20>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-18
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf