Encouraging Curiosity | Search on Flickr for Library of Congress Photos

Embrace a spirit of curiosity and discovery with your students by exploring the Library of Congress (LOC) photo collections on Flickr containing over 44,000 images. Allow time for serendipitous exploration — those unexpected “rabbit holes” often lead to meaningful engagement and deeper understanding. The images span history, science, art, geography, and countless other subjects, offering rich opportunities to connect visual resources to your curriculum. Here are a few places to start.

Nancy Florio
33 steps
7 minutes

Google

Loc

Flickr

Tip! The Library of Congress (LOC) uploaded photographs to [Flickr.com](https://Flickr.com) that contained little identifying information and invited the public to help. As with any crowd-sourced information, researchers will need to take care to verify any attributions added by users.

There are several ways you can access the Library of Congress photographs on Flickr.com. The simplist way is to do a Google search for these collections by entering ***Library of Congress \[space\] site:Flickr.com*** in the Google search bar. This targeted type of search will look for The Library of Congress only on the Flickr website.

Click your search query to find the Library of Congress (LOC) historic photograph collections on Flickr.com

Choose the listing "About the Library of Congress" on the results page

You'll find information about the LOC's Flickr page and how they added the photos to help with identification.

One of the easiest ways to view all of the images is to view them on the "Photostream" link.

Tip! Scrolling through a photostream—like the LOC collections on Flickr—can reveal unexpected insights. Use this link to explore images thoughtfully, notice patterns, and develop new research ideas.

Click on the Photostream link to begin scrolling. Pay attention to the tip above as you look for images to support your research.

If you aren't looking for a specific topic, scroll until you find an image that piques your interest.

Perhaps this image of a singer?

If you hover over the image, you will see the title and the person or organization that uploaded it to the collection. Here we see that the singer is Betty Rocha with the Duke Ellington band. Click on the image to learn more ...

Information (also called metadata) about each image is revealed when an image is clicked. This information may lead you to further research about the Farm Security Administration, a collection this image is part of.

If you would like to save this image, click the download icon - you will see the many size options available.

You may also share the image in a number of ways when you click the Share icon.

These are the sharing options available for each image.

When you're finished, return to the main page with other viewing options by clicking "Back to photostream"

A second viewing option is available by choosing "Albums"

Again, this is another opportunity to scroll through images that have been curated into albums.

This Album, Back to School, looks interesting. Let's take a look at some of the 36 photos included here.

This photo titled, "Intergration pix, classroom & May parade - all at Barnard school, Wash. D.C. (LOC)" interests me. I'm curious as to the date and where it was taken. If I click on the photo, I might find that information in the metadata.

There isn't a precise date, but there is a link to the image on the LOC website, which might lead me to more specific information or other similar images.

Let's return to the main page to explore the "Galleries"

There are a number of "Galleries" to check out.

I'm also interested in photos about the Japanese Internment for an APUSH class. Once I return to the Photostream, I can enter the search term at the top left of the site.

Click here.

This search term yields 36 results.

I've seen this photo before and would like to learn more about it.

I had questions about the store and the sign and learn they are related to the store closing as a result of orders to evacuate directed to persons of Japanese descent.

Returning to the search results . . .

You'll see you have options to limit your search to a SafeSearch and to various copyright licenses.

SafeSearch makes the collection accessible to a wide age-range of researchers.

You can also choose the license that is most relevant to your usage.

Tip! We hope this Scribe tutorial has been helpful. If you would like additional tips for scrolling photostreams, check out our [QuickTips handout.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NBa_m__mdftIFYoiVNBJJYIstVQvrm6n/view?usp=sharing)