Two more Flickr Commons members have joined us in time for the Flickr Commons 17th birthday! We’d love for you to meet them. This month is all about US public libraries but we’ve got more incoming Commons members from around the world.
San Francisco Public Library
San Francisco Public Library has an amazing collection of historical photographs covering life and history from 1850 until now including glass plate negatives from the San Francisco earthquake, the building of the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges, and our special favorite type of album: Solve the Mysteries (with a whole album dedicated to solved mysteries). They’ve also shared images from the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center photograph collections documenting Gay Freedom Day and more recent Pride parades.
City Hall, after April 18, 1906
Gay Freedom Day, San Francisco, 1977
From 1935
View of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge while under construction c. 1935
Marshall Public Library
Marshall Illinois is home to what may be the world’s largest gavel and also the Marshall Public Library which serves about 4000 people. Their Flickr account documents the people and history of Marshall and surrounding communities from founding days of early industry, traveling circuses and courthouse balloon launches, to the present day. Marshall was also home to the Handy Writer’s Colony, known for being the writer’s colony which launched James Jones and the bestselling novel From Here To Eternity.
Circus advertising on local home
Marshall Lions Cheer Squad
Balloon at courthouse
Suffrage women
55 Marshall IL. 617 Archer 2nd. floor repair shop
WPA Building Road to Castle Fin 4 Feb 1937
Sharing through the Commons
The world’s libraries, archives, and museums have made remarkable progress with digital sharing through initiatives like the open culture movement and licensing innovations like Creative Commons. However many smaller museums and archives still face challenges with digitization due to limited time and resources; the Flickr Foundation can help!
Flickr Commons is an ideal platform for these organizations, offering free, user-friendly tools and access to a vibrant global community of big and small institutions. By joining Flickr Commons, smaller institutions can dramatically increase access to their collections and fulfill their mission of sharing cultural heritage, without the usual technical and resource barriers. Flickr’s combination of simple tools and built-in audience makes it a powerful solution for institutions looking to expand their digital presence and find new fans.
If you are in an organization with a photographic collection and are curious about joining us, please register your interest in joining the Flickr Commons today!
Flickr Foundation’s 2025 Plans
So what’s next for us? Our Flickr Commons goals this year are straightforward:
- Welcome more new members, from new places. We have about 120 international organizations in the program now, most from the US/Canada and Europe. We’ll be working towards our first Indian member coming online soon, and having early conversations with an African non-profit advocating for digitization of African public domain materials.
- New tools and toys! Now that we have the new Commons Explorer, we want to expand it. We’re crafting an administrative dashboard to welcome and manage our members, and to help keep an eye on the health of the program. We also want to build even more ways to show off the collection, watch this space!
If you’d like to look up more fun, curious and interesting photographs and images from over 100 Flickr Commons members, the Commons Explorer offers many inroads into this vast treasure trove of cultural heritage. Here are a few places to get started, or find your own
– a keyword search for “valentine”
– all Commons images with location data, on a map
Waverly Place, by James Jowers c. 1968
We continue to look for more organizations and institutions in Africa, South America or Asia, so if that’s you, please reach out for a chat. We’d love to talk to you!