Last month the Flickr Foundation announced the beta release of Data Lifeboat – an archiving tool for any Flickr member to preserve Flickr photos. The archives contain photos, of course, and also all their ‘social metadata’ like tags, comments and curation. Data Lifeboat is simplest when you make an archive of your own Photostream, but it can also be used as a tool for archiving other people’s pictures, and helps you get consent to do that.
A Note to the Future
Data Lifeboat lets you grab sets of photos and write a descriptive README that lives inside the archive for future viewers to quickly understand why you’ve made this particular archive. The archive you end up with is more than just a ‘bucket of files’ since future viewers can quickly see what’s included and why. In addition, the HTML format of the resulting archive allows viewers to easily navigate the images and baked-in metadata using any web browser.
Archiving a selection of Flickr photos can raise a lot of questions. What is being saved? How many photos should be included? Who is it being saved for? Even the word “archive” might seem daunting to a hobby photographer. At the Flickr Foundation, we believe everyone can and should participate in archiving, because the more people who participate in archiving means a richer and more diverse history is being archived.
What kind of things can be archived?
With Data Lifeboat, you can create an archive to document a specific time and place, share memories of an event, or curate a collection of perspectives from around the globe. Simply put, conscious archiving with Data Lifeboat can allow you to create and share your own slice of history with future viewers from this vast collection.
Here are some Data Lifeboat examples from activity so far…
Solar Eclipse
Created by Flickr.com
For the April 8th 2024 Solar Eclipse, NASA partnered with Flickr to gather photos from Flickr members who saw the eclipse. Given that there are tens of billions of photos on Flickr now, there are thousands, if not millions, of shared historical moments like this captured from a variety of perspectives. Plus, space!
View the full Solar Eclipse archive
Uppsala at Home – A Neighbourhood Archive
Created by Flickr member Ulf Bodin
If you look at the photographs William Henry Fox Talbot was taking in the 1840s, he’s recording daily life, and today, those captured moments have become incredible treasures. As the creator of Uppsala at Home, Ulf Bodin, describes it, his Uppsala archive is “a tribute to what I appreciate the most: modest, local photography.” This archive is a collection of 1,000 geotagged images taken within walking distance of Bodin’s hometown.
View the full Upsala at Home archive
Brighton Swimming Club
Created by Flickr member @lomokev Kevin Meredith
This archive of the daily swims by the members of the Brighton Swimming Club—the oldest swimming club with continuous membership in the world—is a testament to the power of documenting a community from within. Flickr contains myriad communities that have recorded themselves over the years. Imagine how many of humanity’s clubs or venues have been recorded there!
View the full Brighton Swimming Club archive
See more Data Lifeboat archives?
We’ve collected a larger selection of Data Lifeboat archives in our showcase. These were created by Flickr photographers, Flickr Commons members, as well as the Flickr Foundation team.
Please note: The Flickr Foundation asked permission to share these archives in our showcase. Normally, archives made with Data Lifeboat are for the creator’s use only. Please take a moment to review the Data Lifeboat Terms of Use for more information on how it all works.