10 | April | 2009 | Eleventh Stack

While we love to illustrate our Eleventh Stack posts, we’re librarians too, so we want to make sure that we honor the images’ creators and the copyright laws of the land. Lucky for us, plenty of resources exist that allow us to do both. One such resource is Flickr’s The Commons, an extension of the social networking and photo-sharing site Flickr, which showcases public photography archives and allows users to help identify and tag images. The Commons includes images from such organizations as the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.

Here are just a few of the gems The Commons offers:

McCall Magazine, Night Before Xmas from the George Eastman House Photography Collection

"McCall Magazine, Night Before Xmas" by Nickolas Muray from the George Eastman House Photography Collection

Untitled by Thomas Smillie from Smithsonian Institution Archives

If you’re itching to see some images of Pittsburgh days gone by, you’ll enjoy the Historic Pittsburgh digital database, which is a collaboration among local libraries, museums and colleges and universities to make publically available its collection of documents, maps and photographs. It includes over 10,500 images from 41 collections.

While the images are under some usage restrictions, CLP offers the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, too. In addition to showcasing a handful of its (mostly undigitized) collection, a staggering wealth of information and anecdotes about Pittsburgh and its history are available on the PPL’s online exhibit “Bridging the Urban Landscape.”

Molten Steel by Frank Reiley from the Collections of the Pennsylvania Department, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

"Molten Steel" by Frank Reiley from the Collections of the Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh"Irene Kaufmann Settlement--Art Class" by Esther Bubley from the Collections of the Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Whether you fancy yourself a bit of a shutterbug, or you just want to browse with a clean conscience, these sites offer a wealth of eye candy. Best of all, these pictures belong to everyone.