1,000,000+ Public Domain Images Added to Flickr's The Commons

Flickr's massive collection of public domain images called The Commons grew by more than 1,000,000 images last week. Last week The British Library released more than 1,000,000 images to The Commons. The images from The British Library cover a wide range of topics from political satire to maps and diagrams to landscapes and portraits. You can find the images from The British Library here and the entire collection of The Commons here.

Applications for Education
The Commons was already a good place for students and teachers to find public domain images (mostly of a historical nature) and the addition of The British Library's images makes it even better. I've used images from The Commons in my history classes as prompts for discussion and my students have used them in short documentary videos they've made.

To go beyond visual artifacts you may want to explore The British Library's Sound Maps.

Over the weekend many blogs have covered this news from The British Library. I first saw the announcement from a Tweet from Jen Deyenberg. 

Find Images from NASA in The Commons on Flickr

The Commons on Flickr is a good place to find public domain images from archiving institutions around the world. Today, NASA joined The Commons by contributing 180 photographs in three sets to the The Commons. The image sets are titled Building NASA, Launch and Takeoff, and NASA Center Namesakes. All of the images are available for reuse without any copyright restrictions.

This a photo from the Launch and Takeoff set. I saw a photo very similar to this one as an elementary school kid and was very intrigued by it.
















H/T to Read Write Web for the news about NASA's additions to Flickr.

Applications for Education
The Commons on Flickr is a good resource for students in need of images for multimedia projects for history, literature, and other content areas. A requirement of contributors to The Commons is that all images are made available without copyright restrictions. Check out some of the other institutions contributing to The Commons.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
NASA Space Place - Where Science is Fun!
NASA Images - Embed Galleries of Images and Videos
Video - Space Shuttle from Hangar to Launch

Your World in Pictures

Mashable ran a story earlier today about Life (a Time company) and Getty Images joining forces to create Life.com. The site is not live yet, but when it does go live it will host all of the imagery that Life is famous for publishing. If you visit Life.com now, you can sign up to receive an email alert when the site goes live.

Life.com seems like it will be similar to Flickr's Commons collection of images from the Library of Congress.

Applications for Education
If Life.com is as good as Flickr's Commons collection, Social Studies teachers around the world will have access to a great free resource. I often use the images found in Flickr's Commons collection to start conversations about events and topics in US History.

If you're looking for other image resources you may want to check out Picturing America or the Brooklyn Art Museum's Flickr collection.

Art History Via Flickr

The Brooklyn Museum seems to really embrace social media and user generated content. Last month the Brooklyn Museum hosted an online visitor curated exhibit called Click. Now the Brooklyn Museum has made available, on Flickr, thousands images from their collection. The Brooklyn Museum's Flickr photostream contains 54 albums featuring thousands of images spanning numerous aspects of art and art history.

Applications for Education
Online art collections like those from the Brooklyn Museum and other museums, art galleries, and libraries make far more material available to students than they would ever find in their school or local library.

Online art collections are useful in other content areas as well. A collection of Egyptian images is a great supplement to a history lesson as it can engage visual learners. And if you're looking for material to complement an American literature or American history course be sure to check out The Commons collection on Flickr in addition to the Brooklyn Museum's collections.