The Library of Congress recently announced the debut of an official flickr photo account that grants access to some 3,000 photographs with no known copyright. The site is divided into two categories: “News in the 1910s” and “1930s-40s in Color.”

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

From the Library’s perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and — most importantly — wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it.