The Library of Congress has 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials, much of it without any metadata (who is in a photo, where it was taken, etc.).  How do you collect all that metadata with a limited government staff and budget?  One way is to have smart people work with an innovative company to form a partnership whereby an active online community can willingly do the hard work for you.  A huge team doing small bits of work can accomplish a lot more than a small team trying to do a seemly endless chore, so they’re starting with 3,000 photos and asking us — the community — to tag them with anything we can contribute.  It’s yet another long tail strategy.  Read about The Commons on Flickr and the Library of Congress (announced today on their blog).

There are countless opportunities for the government to leverage web technologies and communities in ways that will help agencies fulfill their missions and benefit the public in a number of ways.  It’s great to see the Library leading in this area — I hope others follow.