On June 16, 2008, the Smithsonian joined the Flickr Commons. The Flickr Commons is a place where cultural institutions can share their photographic collections with the world. An important part of Flickr is the ability of the Flickr "community" to interact with the photos through adding comments, "tagging" the photos with subject terms, and providing feedback on the photos themselves.
Smithsonian Libraries is sharing 144 images from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
Libraries staff played an important role in the Flickr project, not only in providing technical work for the SIL photographs, but also in behind the scenes for for all 800+ Smithsonian images.
From Technical Services, Jody Mussoff (pictured above with her "Smithsonian Team Flickr" shirt) and Ninette Dean organized the photos into "sets" and edited the descriptions for each photo; Suzanne Pilsk did editorial work on the SIL collections. From the New Media Office, Erin Rushing retrieved all the SIL images and worked with Smithsonian Photographic Initiatives to get them to Flickr.
Thanks to all for making this project a great success!
- Martin Kalfatovic
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