In the picture

I discovered this amazing news through Genevieve at Reeling and Writing and Lucy Tartan Sorrow at Sills Bend: the Library of Congress has recently added a significant chunk of its collection of images and photographs to flickr – free, and without restriction, as they've selected "only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist" to share online.

That's 3,115 (to date) copyright-free images to use! I'm salivating just thinking of all those images to use in blogs, agit prop, histories and research.

I'm also excited because, as I've mentioned before, I'm going to take a serious effort to learn photography this year, and this is going to make a great learning resource and an introduction to the history of American photography. What I'm also amazed is that someone (or more than one someone) actually sat through all of them uploading, adding titles and descriptions that include photographer, subject, date, and technical notes - and tags! Now that's discipline. And commitment to librarianship and the commons. You'll find them at the Library of Congress flickr page.

The photo above is by Jack Delano, of "Mrs. Marcella Hart, mother of three children, employed as a wiper at the roundhouse, Clinton, Iowa," taken in April 1943. I found it under the tag 'railways'.