The Smithsonian Institute, the world's "largest museum and research complex" as well as the repository of our nation's historical artifacts, has joined the Flickr community. They are uploading an initial number of around 900 photographs.
Only a very small percentage of our photographs presently exist in digital form, and many have not been fully researched and described. The photos you see here are a sample of the more than 13 million images in some seven hundred collections in our museums, archives, and research centers. These collections contain photographs collected from outside sources in addition to those taken by Smithsonian staff, and represent a broad range of subjects and themes in the fields of art, history, culture, and science.
This is a really savvy initiative on Smithsonian's part. There's a lot of good stuff there like this image of a mail carrier delivering a freakin' child:
Read more here and check out the rest of the Smithsonian Flickr images.