Flickr Commons’ 5th anniversary celebrated with four galleries

Flickr Commons, in association with the Library of Congress, is celebrating its fifth birthday and is launching four galleries of most popular photos in the eyes of the viewers.

One select photo from each of the four Flickr Commons’ 5th anniversary galleries

Five years ago, the US Library of Congress and Flickr have announced a partnership that resulted in the birth of Flickr Commons, a collection of 1,500 public domain images.

Quickly expanding gallery

On January 16th, 2008, Flickr Commons measured about 1,500 photos, while early last year it went up to 200,000 images as the collection celebrated its fourth anniversary. Since January 2012, more than 50,000 images have been added, in order to take the total to 250,000 photographs.

Flickr and the Library of Congress thanked the users for their support, as the collections have attracted more than 165,000 comments and two million tags. This is an impressive amount to be reached in just five years and the two partners praised the users to enriching the collections.

Institutions joining the party

“The Commons on Flickr” states that dozens of institutions have jumped aboard the ship and they brought a great deal of quality to the collection. This is truly the world’s public photography archive with images uploaded by NASA, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Stockholm Transport Museum, The National Archives UK, the Australian War Memorial, and the Texas State Archives among many others.

Five years of The Commons

In order to celebrate the Commons’ fifth anniversary, Flickr asked the participating institutions to make a list of their most commented, viewed, and favorited photos, so that the photo sharing website can compose a special collection with the most popular images. The original plan was to compile a single gallery, but the images were wonderful enough to create four collections, said Flickr.

The Library of Congress also thanked the 56 different archives, libraries, and museums. Three galleries consist of 18 photos each, while the fourth gallery contains only 14 images:

• first;
• second;
• third;
• fourth.

The two parties are inviting users to check the Flickr Commons discussion group, where they can find other delightful pictures.