The National Library of Wales
Radnorshire on Flickr - can you help?
Wed, 06 May 09 14:30:00
The world-wide audience who upload their photographs on to the Flickr website are being asked to help inform The National Library of Wales and the global public, of places and people in Radnorshire a hundred years ago.
The National Library of Wales today (Thursday 7 May 2009) posted its first collection of photographs on the famous photo sharing website Flickr. By doing so the National Library is the first British library to join the Flickr Commons initiative.
The Flickr Commons was launched in January 2008 to show hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives. The website also allows users to comment and add their own input to the photographs, which in turn enriches the collections held at the archives. Other global institutions involved with the scheme include the USA’s Library of Congress, the George Eastman photographic archive and the Imperial War Museum.
The Library has uploaded over 100 photographs from the P B Abery collection, a rich collection of photographs taken between 1890 and 1940 in the border area of Wales and England, and especially the old county of Radnorshire in present day Powys. The photos include the weird and wonderful – including a dog smoking a pipe and turkeys blocking the road, the beautiful landscape of Radnorshire and the agricultural world in decline by the 1920s.
According to the Librarian, Andrew Green,
‘The Flickr website allows us as a Library to increase public access to our photographic collections. We presently hold over 800,000 photographs in total. More importantly people can add their own comment. Many photographs in the P B Abery collection contain unknown locations or unidentified people. We are asking the people of Wales and beyond to help us identify the photographs.’
Web Links
For more information
Medi Jones, NLW Press Office: 01970 632 534 llinosmedi.jones@llgc.org.uk
