Commons:Uploading from the Seattle Municipal Archives Flickr stream

Seattle Municipal Archives maintains a Flickr account to which they upload several photos a week from their extensive collection. As of 2020, for over a decade Joe Mabel (User:Jmabel) has been uploading these to Commons, importing over 1500 images. This page was started in June 2020 to document that process in support of others being able to take that over. It also may provide a useful template for other similar efforts.

Background

Seattle Municipal Archives is an office of the Seattle city government, and can authorize use of pretty much any materials where the city holds copyright. It's a relatively large office of its kind compared to the size of the city (about 6-7 full time equivalent employees handling the archives of a city of about 750,000). Many other city departments have built up archives of their own over the years. These are all now managed by the Municipal Archives. While many other portions of the Seattle city government maintain Flickr streams or other similar web presences, the Municipal Archives are definitely our go-to for high-quality Seattle city government materials, and they have been very helpful and forthcoming. Besides the Flickr stream, there is also Category:PD Seattle Neighborhood Atlas. They also have an extensive online archive, and if there is a particular image someone wants to use it can be rewarding to look well beyond the Flickr stream.

Copyright considerations

In general, the city is very generous about free-licensing materials for which they hold copyright. Their usual policy is, "Our photographs are public record and do not require permission for use. We ask that photographs are cited Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives and that the identifier number is included." In addition, everything that goes to the Flickr stream is licensed {{Cc-by-2.0}}.

• Usually if something appears in the Flickr stream where someone other than the city holds copyright, they will mark it "All rights reserved".
• They have very occasionally been known to accidentally offer a cc-by license for something they actually don't own, and where the archivist overlooked a copyright issu. When in doubt, contact them; they are helpful in sorting this out.
• Somewhat more frequently, they will offer a cc-by license for something that by now is certainly in the public domain: an old business card, or a 1900s photograph. Our practice has been to record their offered license and also note the PD license that most likely applies.

Uploading process

For many years now, Joe has uploaded all free-licensed content from the Seattle Municipal Archives Flickr stream to Commons using https://tools.wmflabs.org/flickr2commons/, usually uploading each image within 30 days of it initially being posted there. Typically, content on the Flickr stream is, by our standards, a bit under-described and has a few quirks, which get corrected either in the upload process or immediately afterwards:

filename

Because their focus is Seattle, they rarely mention "Seattle" in the filename. Usually, in flickr2commons, we will want to prepend "Seattle - " to most of their filenames (especially true for files named in terms of street names).

description

Their descriptions are very terse and include links to their own site. The links are actually very useful (especially the item number link, see discussion below), but they come in as HTML, not as wiki external links, so after uploading expect to change, for example, <a href="http://archives.seattle.gov/digital-collections/index.php/Detail/objects/63623" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Item 29691</a> to [http://archives.seattle.gov/digital-collections/index.php/Detail/objects/63623 Item 29691]. Also, if at all possible, write a better description before uploading, one up to Commons standards, and use {{En}}. If there is some useful information in their title or description, repeat it inside the {{En}}. flickr2commons will upload both their original description and the one you write; that's fine.

date

Flickr is not great for dates. Instead of "1970" it gives us the inaccurately precise "1970-01-01 00:00:00". If at all possible, after uploading remove this inaccurate precision. Remember to use things like {{Circa}} or {{other date|between}} as appropriate. If we have precision to the day, use {{Taken on}}; see also discussion of #categories below.

permissions

see #copyright considerations above.

source

Joe recently introduced {{Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr}} which is good to append immediately after the source provided by flickr2commons. That will also add Category:Seattle Municipal Archives via Flickr.

Categories

We should almost always have at least one category that indicates each of:

• What is depicted
• Where it is located
• When this was taken

What: whenever we have an appropriate category for a particular person, building, street, etc., please use it. If we don't have a category for a relevant building, but a lot is known about it (e.g. architectural style, date of construction, etc.) please add all relevant categories. Lacking specifics, it's good if, where relevant, we get things like Category:Tram tracks in Seattle (historic), Category:History of streetcars in Seattle, Category:Roadworks in Seattle, Category:Streets in Seattle, Category:Houses in Seattle, Category:Shops in Seattle, etc. but also Category:Seattle City Light employees, Category:Women at work in Washington (state), etc. Also remember to consider Category:Destroyed buildings in Seattle: it's good to know that something is no longer there. Conversely, if a prominently featured building still exists, that should probably be mentioned in a description or an imageNote.

Where:

• Overwhelmingly, the photos in the archive are in Seattle itself, but don't presume that: there are some in unincorporated King County, Washington (especially the Cedar River watershed) or at airports outside city limits, or relating to Seattle City Light hydroelectric projects scattered throughout the state. There are generally good categories available for these, e.g. Category:Seattle water supply system, Category:Cedar River pipe line, Category:Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Category:Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, Category:Boundary Dam. This overlaps into date categories: Category:1950 in Seattle vs. Category:1950 in Washington (state).
• It's great if we have a category for a particular building; lacking that, at least try for one or more neighborhood categories -- Seattle neighborhoods have ill-defined borders, and often two or even three apply -- and, independently of that if we have it, a street category. Most Seattle streets extend beyond a single neighborhood, so this is generally not redundant to neighborhood.
• Also, consider "Views from" categories, as appropriate; e.g. probably a lot more belongs in Category:Views from Alaskan Way Viaduct than is currently there.
• Note that they often provide geo-coordinates when known. That is very useful in identifying the right location categories

When

• Starting with January 2013, we should have a category like Category:January 2013 in Seattle for every month. Before that, those are pretty sparse, and if the month is known we typically use something like Category:January 2006 in Washington (state) plus Category:2006 in Seattle. If you go even farther back, at some point a more common pattern is Category:January 1966 in the United States plus Category:1966 in Seattle.
• If you know the precise day, but {{Taken on}} is not appropriate (e.g. we know the time down to the hour, and {{Taken on}} doesn't handle that well), consider categories like Category:Photographs taken on 1928-11-13 or Category:United States photographs taken on 1894-07-04.

Technical categories

• Category:Black and white photographs of Seattle
• For non-photos, consider Category:Ephemera and its subcategories.

Higher resolution

Files in the Seattle Municipal Archives Flickr stream will have a link to the Municipal Archives' own site, e.g. Item 29691, Don Sherwood Parks History Collection… Usually you can find a higher-resolution version there, sometimes a JPEG or GIF but usually a TIFF. For some files -- especially street scenes in shopping districts, or crowd scenes -- it is very worthwhile to upload the highest resolution we can get. If it's a TIFF, you can convert it easily to a JPEG with GIMP (or if you are very hardcore, ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick). Just remember to wait for {{FlickreviewR}} or similar to confirm the license before you do the higher-res upload.

ImageNotes

ImageNotes are very useful for:

• Identifying individuals. "Fourth from the left" is OK, but an ImageNote is usually clearer.
• Transcribing the test of signs, especially ones that might otherwise go unnoticed.
• Identifying buildings.