For the first time in four years, the Flickr Foundation and Flickr.com are delighted to welcome three new members to the Flickr Commons! You can see in the 2024 plan of the Flickr Foundation, we’ve been working on nurturing and growing Flickr Commons this year, so we’re thrilled to open the doors again. The collection to date is made up of over 1.8 million photographs from over 100 cultural institutions around the world. We’ve been looking forward to welcoming new institutions, new ideas, and especially new pictures—all with No Known Copyright Restrictions—in Flickr Commons for everyone to see and enjoy, and even add new information about.
We’ll be adding several new members over the next few months, and if you’re working at a museum, library, archive, or historical society and you’re interested to find out more about joining Flickr Commons, please register your interest with the Flickr Foundation and we’ll be in touch. Without further ado, please welcome our three newest members of Flickr Commons!
Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County
The Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County in Belleville, Ontario has a smorgasbord of historical documentation of their community including town brochures, pictures from the Historic Structures Committee/Building Research Committee, and over a thousand local maps. Have a look at the Archives’ curated albums for a handy overview. They are actively acquiring new imagery, which you can explore year-on-year, and the collection reaches from relatively recent history back to 1860s. Visit their Flickr site and check out their official website to learn more about their work.
Man with two white horses
A photo print of a balloon ascension by the Jewell Brothers, Oct. 1, 1890
Two men in uniform with an aircraft. There is a terrier emblem on the side of the plane with “WHO SAID RATS” written under it.
Reproduction of a map showing the roads, forts and inns of Hastings and Prince Edward Counties in 1850, by Major Baron De Rottenburg.
Letterform Archive
So many typefaces! Font geeks unite! Whether you want to look through type foundry catalogs from Portugal or just look at what the letter é looks like in early French type specimens, San Francisco’s non-profit Letterform Archive has got you covered. See what they’ve already shared to their Flickr site and check out their official website.
Vette Antieke Cursief specimen, Amsterdam, c.1950
Companhia Industrial do Norte / Fundição Typografica Portugueza, Porto, ca. 1915 (image taken 2020)
Kabel, Rudolf Koch, 1927–30
Not photographs?
We’ve worked with the Letterform Archive to also make sure they’re using the Flickr setting called Content Type. There are different content types available to any Flickr member: 1) Photos/Videos, 2) Screenshots/Screencasts, 3) Illustration/Art/Animation/CGI or other non-photographic images, and 4) Virtual Photography/Machinima. Given that lots of Flickr Commons members have not-photographs in their accounts (like maps, letters, book scans, or type specimens), we ask politely that they assign a more relevant content type to their pictures to fit in with the Flickr Commons’ Collection Development Policy, which emphasizes our focus on photography.
Port Morien Digital Archive
This is a wonderful archive of small-town coastal Canada with a history of rich traditions. See photos of how a lighthouse changed over time or share in seventy years of community celebrations. A big thank you to our newest members for their patience as we prepared to re-open. Good things come to those who wait, and all that. The archive has actually been using Flickr since 2013, so we’re chuffed to finally welcome them to the Flickr Commons, check out their Flickr site today!
Miss Morien c. 1949
Img121 – August 1963
Arthur Bray, Co-op manager
Floyd Phalen, private coal pit
Other Flickr Commons developments this year
Our plan to reinvigorate the Flickr Commons included making an improved online discovery experience, so we have built a new Commons Explorer. It’s designed just for looking at Flickr Commons photos, getting to know our members, and keeping in touch with the various conversations going on around photographs in our member collections. You can even explore using a map to see historical pictures in places you love.
Thank you to the Flickr.com team for supporting us thus far. Ruppel, Norby, Josie, Crystal, Phil, Adrian, Marc, Leticia, Sahana, and David, for working with us to reopen the program to new members. Stay tuned for new launches coming soon, and again, if you work at a museum, library, archive, or historical society, please let us know if you’re interested in joining and read our FAQ about why you might want to.
