Welcome the National Library of Scotland to The Commons!

Cheery pilot and observer with their mascot pup ready for a flight over the German lines

Happy Scottish troops on New Year's Day

Please join us in welcoming the National Library of Scotland to The Commons! They bring us over 2,000 images, including The Last Letter of Mary Queen of Scots, photographs of tenements on the South Side of Edinburgh taken in 1929 prior to their demolition, the order for the massacre of Glencoe and World War One official photographs from the Library’s Haig Collection, making theirs one of the largest collections in The Commons.

Be it soldiers in the trenches, planes taking to the skies, nurses in the hospitals tending to the wounded or just some camp horseplay, their World War I collection is striking in its comprehension. Dig deeply into these rich archives to see images of Winston Churchill, Queen Mary, the Prince of Wales, King George V and French President Raymond Poincar, among other dignitaries. We hope you’ll annotate these images to bring their stories to life.

Scene through a shell holeEvery day a batch of prisoners of this size, taken on the British Sector of the Western Front, pass through one of the Clearing DepotsH.M. the King of Montenegro and the Commander-in-Chief

Cheerio!

Divisional Commander with the divisional pet 'Rip'

Officer leads the way amidst the bursting of German shells    Newly captured German machine at a Flying Corps depot near the front

Winston Churchill in plain clothes    Queen leaving a hospital

Flooded dug-out in front line trench

The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer. You’re invited to help describe the photographs you discover in The Commons on Flickr, either by adding tags or leaving comments.

Photos from the National Library of Scotland.