If you do genealogical research long enough, its easy to fall into a rut of using the same research resources. Maybe it’s time to make a (slightly late) New Year’s resolution to try some new ones. To that end, here’s a resource you might not have considered: photo sharing site Flickr.com. Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) is one of the most popular and, in my opinion, powerful photo sharing sites out there. With lots of tools for describing, taging and sharing photos its a great place for the genealogically-minded to store their scanned family photos (privacy options are available). I recently moved my entire family photo library from Shutterfly.com over to Flickr.
But beyond just hosting your photos, Flickr has a Groups feature that lets you subscribe to any number of special interest image-related groups. I searched in groups with the tag/keyword “genealogy” and a huge number of Flickr Groups came up. Their focus runs the gamut from cemetery photography to general genealogical interest and even to scanned newspaper clippings. I found some devoted to images on surnames I’m researching (will investigate those eventually to see if there is a connection).
To get you started, here are a few Flickr Groups I checked out and subscribed to myself:
General Genealogy
- General genealogy group http://www.flickr.com/groups/genealogy/
- Genealogy documents group http://www.flickr.com/groups/gendocs/
Cemetery
- The FindaGrave.com group http://www.flickr.com/groups/findagrave/
- Group for general cemetery & grave photography http://www.flickr.com/groups/cemetary/
Photography
- Group all about daguerreotypes http://www.flickr.com/groups/dags/
Newspapers
- Group for vintage newspapers http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagenewspapers/
- Group for all newspaper scans http://www.flickr.com/groups/newspaperscans/
And of course I created my own set of public images to share:
- Origins Genealogy Project Ephemera. An album of newspaper clippings, postcards and memorabilia passed down in my family.
Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: family history, flickr, genealogy, research sites, tips
