The Library of Congress uploads 1.5 million picture archive to Flickr.

The Library of Congress uploaded a couple photo archives to Flickr, a popular Internet photo sharing website. The photo archive includes thousands of historical photographs. Many are already on the library's own website, but it hopes the public will help them tag, or label, the photos on Flickr for easier accessibility.

Flickr discussed the new partnership with the Library of Congress, called The Commons pilot project, in its blog. The Library of Congress has an huge photo catalog, containing more than 1 million photos, and has chosen about 1,500 photos each from two of its more popular collections to show on Flickr.

Members of Flickr or non-members, too, can view the 1930-40s in Color photo collection or the News in the 1910s photo collection. Only Flickr members can help tag the photos or make comments on the photos.

"There are two main aims to The Commons project, starting with the pilot: firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search," said the Flickr blog posting "Many hands make the work light."

The Library of Congress team has also blogged about the project and NPR interviewed the Library of Congress on Monday during its "Morning Edition" show, available online.