The Library of Congress and Flickr
One of the great things about my work at MIT is the preposterous level of encouragement the people there give each other. Example: even though I’m not a researcher, I get encouraged to post occasionally to the Center for Future Civic Media’s blog because I have a media background and am (nearly) equal in nerdiness to my formal researcher colleagues.
Since I’m in charge of making sure people post to our blog—which can be tough around Christmas—I’ll keep interviews in the hopper for use when posting is slow. Not only is that typical prudent editorial management, but it’s a really great way to approach people outside MIT that I admire.
Here’s a preview. Going up on the site sometime this week is an email interview I did with Michelle Springer, Project Manager for Digital Initiatives at the Library of Congress. Michelle was in charge of managing the Library of Congress’s partnership with Flickr. I asked Michelle to pick some favorite photos from the LoC’s Flickr photostream and to describe how they speak to what Flickr can do for the relationship between the public and a government institution:
The photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178249475/ is a terrific example of the personal history and memories that these photos can evoke. The original caption was “Street in industrial town in Massachusetts.” Flickr members quickly identified the location, and the Library changed the title to Sylvia Sweets Tea Room, corner of School and Main streets, Brockton, Mass., both in the Flickr version and in the Prints and Photographs Online catalog. The Library also added a note to its own online catalog record for this picture (http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a33856) so that people are pointed to the constantly growing rich discussions out in Flickr.
The rest of the interview is great, so be sure to bookmark civic.mit.edu.
Update: the interview is now posted.
