Library of Congress uses Flickr to crowdsource tagging and organizing its photo archive

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/217809620/library-of-congress.html

David sez, "The Library of Congress is now posting photos at flickr so citizens can tag and describe them."

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

Link (Thanks, David!)