[LM_NET] Flickr Helps the Library of Congress

[mlgav <mlgav@YAHOO.COM>]

thought this was interesting....
    Archivists at the Library of Congress need your help, and Flickr's, to identify 
these photos.

  By Brian Braiker
  Newsweek Web Exclusive
  Updated: 6:26 PM ET Jan 24, 2008
    A koan for our digital age: if a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the 
right word worth? The Library of Congress aims to find out. The venerable old 
institution has teamed up with Flickr, the popular social-networking and 
photo-sharing site, to create "Flickr Commons." By putting 3,115 of its archival 
photographs on the site, the LOC hopes Flickr's community of users will apply 
tags—usually one-word descriptions—to them. The photos are already online at the 
library's Web site, but the LOC hopes Flickr's 23 million members will tell them 
something about the images they don't already know. "It's akin to bringing the 
mountain to Muhammad," says Matt Raymond, the LOC's director of communications. 
"It's an excellent way to use the technology."
  If giving the unwashed masses the power to tag (effectively index and organize) 
the LOC's photo archive sounds, well, potentially risky, the response has been 
instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive. Within 24 hours of the project's launch 
last week, all 3,115 images had been viewed at least once (with 650,000 total 
views), more than 500 pictures had received comments, and 4,000 unique tags had 
been added. And some of them are already proving useful: users have added new 
information in tags and comments to portraits of boxers, sulky racers, base 
stealers, Riveting Rosies and many, many more.
   
  for the rest of the article.
   
  http://www.newsweek.com/id/103198
   
  ~~~~~~
  mary gavlik
  library media specialist
  chuckey-doak middle school
  afton, tn 37616
  423-787-3048




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places 
where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason
for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians. 
— Monty Python skit
       
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