Sunday, January 20, 2008

Bain News Service Images now on Flickr


[Image description: 1910s photo labeled "Blind Athletes at Overbrook PA" showing a group of younger and older boys in gym clothes forming four-level human pyramids on a grassy field.]

I've mentioned the wondrous Bain Collection before here--it's a huge set of news photos from the 1910s, in the Library of Congress. There are a wide array of disability history images there, from General Dan Sickles to deaf schoolchildren dancing.

Well, the Bain Collection just got more interesting, because it's on Flickr as part of an experiment in public history--Flickr users are invited to add tags, comment, and otherwise interact with the over 1500 historical photos--some are already adding links for more information about the photos' various subjects. Go give it a whirl, browse around, leave a comment or add a tag. This is a chance to tell disability stories to a very wide audience indeed. (I've been adding biographical information on some of the images of women, myself.)

UPDATE 1/21: Ah well. I've looked through the whole collection now, and I'm pretty sure they didn't include any of the Dan Sickles images, nor the deaf school children dancing, nor the disabled veterans boxing, in the Flickr set... but there are still some images there that I've tagged "disability" (if someone else didn't get there first).

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