Images for the Future has posted a report, Taking Pictures to the Public, from the Nationaal Archief about their involvement in the Flickr Commons pilot. Here are some of the highlights that the Archief discovered about their first six months on the Commons:

• There were 1 million+ page views, 2,000+ comments, and 6,800+ tags on 771 photos
• 74% of the photos are annotated in some way (comments, notes, tags)
• 3% of the comments received were used to update the images in their archives
• 10% of the crowdsourcing comments including links to other relevant internet sites
• Of the 6,800+ tags, about half were left in English and half in Dutch
• 2,000 Flickr users have added the Archief as a contact

The report goes into some detail about the impact of these statistics, especially on learning how to use social media (when to step in to moderate discussions and when to let it go), that particular subjects (world wars) can evoke robust discussion, and that being on the Commons also increased page views and their Google ranking for their website. However, they also note in their conclusion that Flickr should not be used in place of professional archivists and experienced volunteers, though it acts as a good adjunct, since such a small number of the comments received had information that could be fed back into their archives (tags are not yet being fed back into their system).

They do note how infrequently comments had to be moderated, and described Flickr as a self-policing community, with the Archief having removed a total of only 3 comments due to inappropriate language. These seemed to revolve around arguments between Nazi sympathizers and Russians, or anti-German comments being posted to certain war images.

You can download the report (in Dutch) here.

Tags: Nationaal Archief, reports

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