canis

Excelente fotografía, una escena maravillosa. Saludos

Great capture...Looks like a scene from "Secret Garden"

Over 3, 000 glass negatives survive from the Clonbrock family, whose photographic tradition began with the marriage of an enthusiastic amateur, Lady Augusta Crofton, to Luke Dillon, later 4th Baron Clonbrock, in 1866. Soon afterwards they built a fully equipped ‘Photograph House’ in the grounds of their house near Ballinaske, Co. Galway. Read more: www.answers.com/topic/country-house-photography#ixzz1dNuy... The house is now a shell due to a fire in the 1980's

Moira We have about 3,500 of the Dillons photos. They were an amazing family of early photographers. And you might be glad to hear that the house is being restored...

Great style... Makes me dream of another time, although I must say that I love being in blue jeans !

How did they manage in those skirts ?

patrick vickers With great difficulty, I would imagine! Certainly no rushing through narrow doorways...

Having read the above I understand where you are and I am sure you took a long time to make this decision.

That said - I believe you have made a bad decision.

Any other Library in the world would give their right arm to have a commons presence half as good as you have.
Your operation is world class and a great credit to the NLI and all who work there.
There must be a solution that would allow the photostream continue, could the regular commentators help?

I would ask the people who regularly look at this photostream to join me in asking you to reconsider this decision.

p.s. Nice Dog

I agree with what Danny has just written. I realise the demands on the staff running and working in the National Library and the amount of time this must take to research, choose, digitise and then upload each shot with the moderation that is necessary if you are to keep spammers out.
On the other hand this stream was reaching all over the world and garnering valuable information on the photographs and the time when they were taken. It would be a pity to lose the momentum that has been gained and I for one would be happy to help in a practical way if that were possible!
Well trained dogs are a great asset, going to your rivals house would be really good training:-)

Having seen this I have written to NLI - www.flickr.com/groups/2095211@N25/discuss/72157641106924204/

The greatest enemy of data gathering on old photographs is Time. Danny and Swordscookie have made very valuable points and I can only add that every week that goes by must make it more difficult to gather personal information and reminiscences. Great photo and a great doggy yarn.

DannyM8 Swordscookie billh35 Mike I'd echo what you're all saying here, having worked in the cultural sector on digital projects for many, many years. I've also read with interest your comments on the previous thread. I'd also add that not just any Library, but particularly any commercial company, would give big bucks to have someone who could build and engage with an audience the same way that this photostream has done for the last few years.

It's ironic that a reason given here is to allow information to be integrated into the catalogue, something that is relatively easy using the API, compared with, say, trying to harness information from Twitter replies or Facebook comments. And also that the stock reply seems to be to look at the online catalogue, which although good by most museums' standards is still difficult to use and crucially has no crowdsourcing or social elements to it.

I'll end with a few NL Ireland stats that I hope give some perspective and objectiveness (though it's hard to find directly comparable metrics, and they're rather hastily thrown together so could do with verifying):

Flickr Commons
- taking the image before last as a typical example ( I can see just 264 Pins in two years, which is very low. Unfortunately you can only do this at domain level so it is not possible (as far as I know) to just look at a specific Flickr photostream, but I suspect The NLI Flickr Commons images would be very well represented.

Thinking with my professional hat on, I would love to take a look at the NLI site's web stats and also their Flickr stats and check referrals from these channels as this would give a must more meaningful measure of 'success'.