Florida's Archival Photos Spur Web Discussion

Palm trees stand sentinel along the Homosassa River beneath a dreamy swirl of clouds setting the stage for one of Florida's iconic images and for viewers worldwide.

"Is this infrared?" asks bglasgow in a comment posted beneath the lurid black-and-white photograph taken in January 1952, one of 600 pictures of Florida now part of a new online collection at www.flickr.com/commons/

"Looks infrared to me," another viewer replies.

Then a representative from the State Library and Archives of Florida, which posted the images, weighs in: Yes, it's infrared.

The institution in February became one of the first state archives in the country to participate in this pilot project launched a year ago by the U.S. Library of Congress and the photo-sharing Web site Flickr. Today there are 23 international museums and libraries from the Smithsonian to the Bibliothèque de Toulouse involved.

Flickr: The Commons has more than 4,500 photos of people and places, many taken during the Victorian era, the Great Depression and World War II. The public is invited not only to view this impressive historic collection for free, but to comment and tag or classify photographs, offering more information and even correcting descriptions if necessary.

The opportunity obviously has struck a chord with site visitors, who average 500,000 views a month according to a project summary released late last year. You can download pictures with no known copyright restrictions for free and even order prints.

The Florida photos, a compilation from six state collections, span the decades from 1884 to 1996 and includes images of Seminole Indians taken by missionary Harriet Bedell; folk festivals and musicians taken mainly in White Springs; kitschy publicity and tourism photos; famous portraits of middle-class blacks shot by Tallahassee photographer Alvan S. Harper; and the Brown family from around Eastpoint and St. George Island.

The project has yet to reveal anything surprising about Florida's photographs, says state archives historian Joshua Youngblood. But it has promoted collections that might otherwise be overwhelming for Internet users to research on their own, and it has spawned a blog at www.indicommons.org/about/contact-us.

Perhaps most important, The Commons has started a conversation with far-reaching results as people put names and dates to images from the past, Youngblood says.

"This is prompting historical discussions all over the world."