January 15, 2025

A Few of Jessamyn's Favorite Things

Jessamyn West is a librarian and community technologist who lives in Central Vermont. She currently works at the Flickr Foundation as the Community Lead for Flickr Commons. To celebrate Public Domain Day, we asked her to tell us a bit about some of her favorite public domain things in their collection and she kindly obliged!

My favorite public domain thing in our collection is... all of it!

That is, I am the Community Manager for the Flickr Commons. It's a special place on the internet, inside of Flickr.com where cultural heritage organizations preserve, share, and sustain their digital images. All of these images are shared online using our special designation "no known copyright restrictions." This is slightly different from the public domain in that it allows an organization to state that an item doesn't have copyright restrictions to the best of their knowledge. You can read more about this designation here.

Flickr Commons got started in 2008 as a partnership with the Library of Congress which had been using this designation for more than a decade, allowing them to be inclusive and broad-minded in what they could share. In 2022, the Flickr Foundation was created in part to steward this collection of 1.8 million images from over 100 partners all of which have no known copyright restrictions.

I've been a fan of Flickr Commons since I remembered hearing about it in the early days and I've been working with the Flickr Commons members since 2023. We have other members of the team who do tech, digital preservation, "big idea" work, development and web design. One of my favorite tools we've built is the Commons Explorer which gives you a "discovery layer" to the huge collection of images which span the entire history of photography.

Here are some of my recent faves:

This doorbell sign from San Francisco Public Library

model eyeball in a window with a sign hanging from it reading "S'il vou plait Ring bell at No. 8 or... knock politely. Merci"

This wee pup from the State Library of New South Wales

tiny puppy peeking out from an old-fashioned camera

This massive book from the Library of Congress:

two men in old-fashioned garb perusing a giant book. Caption reads " The Library of Congress Registering in the "biggest book" California Exhibit. Agricultural building Louisiana Purchase Exposition."

Elen and Mathilde and their friends and a gramophone!

black and white photo of four women with linked arms seated and standing around a gramaphone

Do you have a favorite thing in the public domain? Email us or skeet us and we may feature it on our social! And if you're looking for more opportunities to celebrate the public domain, get your tickets now to these upcoming events!