Grand Grocery Co. in Lincoln, Neb. by John Vachon, 1942

Remember the days when apples were 25 cents for 4 lbs.? Neither do I.

In January of 2008 The Library of Congress debuted a portion of its photo archive on Flickr. The response to the few thousand images has been overwhelming, with about 500,000 page views a month and thousands of comments and tags added by users. It was intended as an experiment to get more information about the images, as well as build awareness about them. It’s achieved both.

Interestingly, there are no copyright restrictions on any of the photos, so people are welcome to use or distribute them as they wish (according to the FAQ). The LOC does have plans to add more collections to Flickr and recommend you leave them a comment if you have a suggestion.