Relay – A Family History Blog

I’m at a library conference and suddenly – someone is talking about various archives that have uploaded their historic photos into Flickr. I never considered Flickr as a possible source for older/old photos of houses, main streets and even family members. But I did some searching and discovered quite a number of wonderful older photos of Kansas towns, North Carolina farms and many photos of people who aren’t related to me – but whose images are turn of the century. Call me obtuse but I had never thought of Flickr as a place for older photos. Many of the archival photos are not well labelled. But you are encouraged to add “tags” and comments if you recognized the image and people are doing that. Be careful how you search, don’t be too specific with a location search. Flickr taggers appear to believe that broader tags are better than more focused specific tags. In other words search for Kansas towns rather than Iola Kansas. Once you find something that interested you check to see if it is part of a Flickr group. These are groups of images related to one another that are browseable just like a photo album. Happy hunting!