Nothing tells a story like a good picture. Photographs from
Vietnam almost single handedly changed America’s views about the war, and
current events in Iran provide us with an equally compelling example in the
grainy video of the death of Neda Soltani.
Photographs are indispensable to the historical record,
shaping as they do how we experience and remember events past and present. With
this noble purpose, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library
of Congress have teamed up with the photo website Flickr to provide a digital
record of photographs from newspapers across America.
On June 12 the Library of Congress released a photostream
on Flickr of 52 weekly supplements of the New York Tribune in 1909. The Tribune
photostream displays the images in a slideshow or singularly—see the newly
elected and rather large President Taft, the saving of the Sequoias at
Calaveras grove by the creation of a National Park in California, the
completion of the 5 mile long Gunnison River tunnel in Colorado, and the big
news of Robert Peary being the first person to visit the North Pole.
The Chronicling of America program, launched in 2007,
brought about this current pilot with Flickr and the Library which is part of
the National Digital Newspaper Program to “provide enhanced access to
historically significant United States Newspapers.” The project plans to
release 50 new pages to the stream every month.
The archiving of newspapers for future study is imperative
to the understanding of American history.
“Newspapers not
only chronicle the daily life of our citizens in thousands of towns and cities,
but also document the civic, legal, historical, and cultural events in every
state and region,” said NEH acting Chairman Carol M. Watson. “These stories, taken together, help to
illuminate the history of our nation.”
This is not the first time that the LC has worked with
Flickr to release important photographs for public viewing. You can also find historical
photos collected by the LC from various government agencies and other
sources throughout the years.
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