National Library of Scotland's historic collection on Flickr: Treasured images for all to share

FROM the poignant last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, to First World War photographs in the personal collection of Field Marshal Earl Haig, treasured images from the National Library of Scotland's historic collection have been shared worldwide through the website Flickr.

• A Tommy cleans the mud from his rifle in the trenches on the Western Front. Picture: National Libraries of Scotland

The NLS has released more than 2,000 archived images, in one of the biggest-ever groups of photographs placed on the Flickr's "The Commons" website.

They are mostly from the library's Haig collection, but also include more than 100 evocative photographs of tenements on the south side of Edinburgh taken in 1929. They include another historic milestone from the library's collection, the order for the Massacre of Glencoe.

Flickr is described as the leading online photo management and sharing application in the world. "The Commons" was set up for the public to view, share and reuse photographic images from culture and heritage archives worldwide, hidden treasures that would not otherwise be seen. Users can comment on images and "tag" them on their own social networking sites.

More than 40 other cultural organisations have added images to the website, ranging from the National Galleries of Scotland, to the Imperial War Museum, to US archives such as the Brooklyn Museum or Library of Congress.

Images free to sample range from photographs of spiritual seances with "ghosts" floating in the air to condemned murderers, historic buildings, or famous faces including Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.

Gill Hamilton, systems librarian at the NLS said: "This is a fantastic resource for the general public - there's no known copyright restrictions on Flickr 'The Commons' photos - so everyone has access to use these images for non-commercial purposes."

The library plans to add more - a total of 3,000 images by the end of the year.

The last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots was written six hours before her execution in 1587; the original order for the Massacre of Glencoe was sent to Captain Robert Campbell in 1692.

The 137 photographs taken in 1929 by Alfred Henry Rushbrook show tenements and shops around St Leonards before buildings were pulled down for slum clearance.

A small selection of images were put on Flickr on a trial basis 18 months ago, but most of the 2,000 were added in recent weeks. Several thousand people have already viewed them.

Field Marshal Earl Haig's pictures from his personal collection - bought by the NLS in 1983 - are mostly official photographs from the F|irst World War designed to record "morale- boosting scenes of victory and comradeship".

With few of the grisly scenes normally associated with the war, and carrying jaunty captions, they include images of a Black Watch sports day, members of the Women's Auxiliary Army playing hockey in France. or soldiers playing with children on a beach.

They include Haig's diary entry for Armistice Day, Monday 11 November, 1918. It begins: "Fine day but cold and dull."

It noted: "The state of the German Army is said to be very bad, and discipline seems to have become so low that the orders of the officers are not obeyed."

The collection came to the library as a long-term deposit in 1961 and was purchased on behalf of the nation in 1983.