| The State Archives of Florida goes on an uploading spree, adding to their Florida Commerce set. The collection includes images of Florida people, places, and events dating from the 1940s through 1996. Some of these are very amusing, including the photos of Weeki Wachee Springs. |  Florida Commerce |
| The E. F. Caldwell & Co. Collection at the Smithsonian Institution contains images of lighting fixtures and other fine metal objects produced from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. |  E. F. Caldwell & Co. Collection |
| Mosteiros from the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian showcases tiles from monasteries in Portugal. Photos by John Miguel Dos Santos Simões.
Also, they have uploaded new photos to three other sets: Concelho da Batalha, Igreja de São Roque, and Palácios portugueses! An indulgence of architecture! |
 Mosteiros |
| Go behind the scenes at the Brooklyn Museum and watch Sun K. Kwak Enfolding 280 Hours. Sun K. Kwak is creating a site-specific work composed of approximately three miles of black masking tape; the exhibit opens in late March. |  Sun K. Kwak Enfolding 280 Hours |
| The State Library of Queensland, Australia adds a few new photos to its collection on Flickr. Entertaining stuff! |  State Library of Queensland, Australia |
| OSU Baseball! celebrates the first 100 years of baseball at Oregon State University. Take me out to the ballgame! Also, Fashion on Flickr: “Revamp, Remix, Rewear”: Oregon’s too-sexy strutting down the catwalk. Check out their collection of sets, History in the Making, covering fashion, recycling, religion, and Obama. Whew. |  OSU Baseball! |
05 Mar: The Conservation and Preservation of Nineteenth-Century Photographic Materials at the Library of Congress. Adrienne Lundgren, Senior Photograph Conservator in the Conservation Division at the LOC, will give an overview of the five main photographic processes used in the 19th century.
07 Mar: 1stFans meet-up at the Brooklyn Museum. Matt Held is the special guest.
11 Mar: Application deadline for Junior Fellows Summer Internships at the Library of Congress. The interns will be exposed to a broad spectrum of library work: preservation, reference, access standards, information management, and the U.S. copyright system.
 Library of Congress |
 pennylrichardsca |
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Pennylrichardsca provides a creative twist on Commons images: suffragette purses! Now you can carry around any Commons image that you love — she provides a tutorial here.
 pennylrichardsca |
 pennylrichardsca |
| FRONT | BACK |
Our celebration continues with part two of our Black History Month subcurated collection. We bring you a selection of images from renowned photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
| Rosebud Denham in embossed dress and feather hat
The State Archives of Florida holds a collection of images from noted portrait photographer Alvan S. Harper. Alvan S. Harper was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1847. Between 1870 and 1884, he was a professional photographer in Philadelphia. Harper moved to Tallahassee in 1884. He was soon advertising that he would take “artistic photographs” in his first studio, a room in the house he was renting. He moved twice before buying a house and building his own studio, where he worked between 1889 and his death in 1911. |
 State Archives of Florida |
| Man with sideburns wearing dark coat
Some of Harper’s best negatives were lost when his studio was torn down in the 1920s. The negatives had been given to a Tallahassee historian who, because they were dirty, left them on a porch where they were mistaken for trash and taken to the dump. About 2,000 more Harper negatives were found in 1946 in the attic of the house he had owned. A Tallahassee photographer printed 250 negatives and circulated the prints in the community for identification. |
 State Archives of Florida |
| Navy Hill School
At the Library of Virginia is the Adolph B. Rice Studio Collection, which constitutes a unique photographic record of life in Richmond, Virginia from 1949 to 1961. The collection consists of more than 16,000 4×5-inch film negatives from the commercial studio of Adolph B. Rice. |
 Library of Virginia |
| City recreation, tennis
Adolph B. Rice Sr. (1909–1960) opened his first photo studio in Richmond in 1949. The studio remained on North Auburn Avenue until it ceased operation in 1961. His clients included businesses, industry, and state and local government. The Library invites the public to identify the images and provide captions for the more than 200 Rice Studio photographs on Flickr. |
 Library of Virginia |
| Going to town on Saturday afternoon, Greene Co., Ga. –by Jack Delano, May 1941. During the Great Depression, in 1935, the Farm Service Administration was developed as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal to to combat American rural poverty. The Library of Congress is the repository for all of these now-famous images by the leading photographers of the era. |
 Library of Congress |
| Negro boy near Cincinnati, Ohio 6— by John Vachon, 1942 or ‘43. The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, led under the auspices of Roy Stryker, that realistically portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. Check out the comments on this photo as a leading example of the power of the Flickr Commons to encourage healthy debate and community. |
 Library of Congress |
| Bayou Bourbeau plantation, an FSA cooperative, Natchitoches, La. A Negro family (?) seated on the porch of a house — by Marion Post Wolcott, 1940.
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 Library of Congress |
| Negro school children, Omar, W. Va. — by Ben Shahn The New York Public Library also has some FSA holdings. Its collection on Flickr does not overlap the LOC’s (so far!). Learn more about the NYPL’s holdings by visiting their Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture website. |
 New York Public Library |
| Omar, mining town, West Virginia, 1935 —by Ben Shahn.
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 New York Public Library |
This week we find out a bit more about the very cool folks who look after all things Web-related at the National Maritime Museum, including the museum’s Flickr Commons account.
The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
As the NMM in Greenwich is my local museum, I was delighted when they joined the Commons in September 2008. I visit the museum regularly as it takes up a large area in the middle of Greenwich and is housed in some very photogenic buildings. I was pretty excited when Fiona invited me down to the Museum one Wednesday afternoon to meet the team and have a chat about Flickr and the Commons. Having met them all, I can say I like the NMM even more now than I did before.
The NMM also organized and hosted our very first Flickr Commons meetup, held not long after these interviews. You can check that out too!
Fiona Romeo
FIONA: I’m Head of Digital Media at the National Maritime Museum (and Royal Observatory, Greenwich), which means that it’s my job to think about how we can transform our visitors’ experience of the museum through innovative uses of technology. In particular, my department is responsible for things like digitization; the museum website; and creative development of digital content and services — from a monthly podcast, to interactive exhibits and mobile learning. About half of my department is participating in the Commons project in some way.
Clickykbd’s newest Greasemonkey Script, “Flickr Commons Recommendations“, adds a grid of “recommendations” to the right side of any photo you encounter in the Flickr Commons collection. The photos in the grid are Commons photos that have been recently favourited by people who like the photo you are currently viewing.
Usually these “recommendations” posses a similar quality, despite being from a variety of Commons institutions. So not only does this script help you stumble across many excellent photos you wouldn’t otherwise find, but it also tends to help identify threads that run across The Commons.
For example, Recommendations on a “cute” photo tend to identify other “cute” photos in the collections of other institutions. It is great to see these threads emerge while browsing around, getting lost in The Commons. The associations might be less discrete than those created by tags, but they are no less interesting.
There’s a lot of creativity on Flickr. Members often share textures and backgrounds to create new art; they share tips on photo editing, too, to remix old works into new ones. Anji one is a master at melding new and vintage photography. Check out her latest work, See No Evil.
 National Galleries of Scotland |
 anji one |
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On Wednesday, February 11, a few Flickrites joined with the staff at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, for a Flickr Commons meetup. Rebecca Higgitt first gave a talk, then the group was given a sneak preview of prints in the Royal Observatory’s photographic collection that will be added to the Commons in the near future. The group also took a tour of the ROG buildings, ending with the crew venturing to the Union Pub for refreshment and Commons discussion.
Anna Graf (our group’s founder) says,
A great day was had by all.
Thanks to James, Natasha, Lucinda, Sam and Fiona from the NMM for making this happen!
Read first-hand accounts at the NMM’s blog and at Bridget McKenzie’s blog.
Photos from andylinden, Big Bean, dopiaza, and whatsthatpicture.
If it’s Friday, it must be Carnival of the Commons day! Take a gander at recent uploads:
| Astronomy! Talk about a convergence of Flickr phenomena. The Powerhouse Musuem participates in the astrometry.net Flickr project. Astrometry will provide astrometric calibration meta-data, plus lists of known objects falling inside the field of view, for any astral photos uploaded to their Flickr group. The Powerhouse is a contributor (check out the photos in this set to see what the project tells us about them! Read what those Flickr code monkeys have to say, too. And, yea, the Royal Observatory Greenwich (part of the National Maritime Museum) is in that Flickr group, too. |
 Powerhouse Museum |
| Matt Held Studio This set of photos from the Brooklyn Museum showcases artist Matt Held, of I’ll have my Facebook portrait painted by Matt Held fame. In fact, I have a request in to Held to have my portrait done. Matt is coming to speak to 1stfans at the March meetup. |
 Brooklyn Museum |
| Pop Quiz! Can you spot a fake? Check out the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, Unearthing the Truth: Egypt’s Pagan and Coptic Sculpture, running February 13–May 10, 2009. But first, take a pop quiz: Can you spot the fake? |
 Brooklyn Museum |
| Phillips Glass Plate Negatives Collection The Powerhouse Museum added 10 photos to its glass plate collection. Read more about one of them, Three Men Playing Cards in an Alcove, at the museum’s blog. |
 Powerhouse Museum |
| Oude beroepen / Old fashioned professions A fantastic series of images that portray historic professions in Europe, including lamplighters, town criers, men delivering ice, and the, errrr, faeces-collector. Oh my. Courtesy of the Nationaal Archief. |
 Nationaal Archief |
| From many lands — multicultural Queensland Afghan camel drivers, Chinese fruit sellers, Japanese pearl divers, and children dressed in Greek traditional costumes — the State Library of Queensland, Australia covers the world. |
 State Library of Queensland, Australia |
| Cup Cake Art — A New Birth of Freedom The Smithsonian Institution had a clever installation earlier this week: Presidential Cup Cakes, by Zilly Rosen. We covered that here, but check out the SI’s blog post on it as well. |
 Smithsonian Institution |
| Edifícios industriais The Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian added a few photos of the Abel Pereira da Fonseca, Ldª, in Lisboa, Portugal, to its Edifícios industriais set — wine! A virtual historic winery tour, if you will. BYOB. |
 Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian |
| News in the 1910s Every month, the Library of Congress uploads 50 photos to Flickr from the George Grantham Bain Collection of 1910s photographs. The latest upload features some fascinating characters, such as Dr. Lyman Abbott. Abbott was a social reform advocate. He was also a Christian Evolutionist. [ed note - corrected to say that 50 new photos each week, not month, are added to this collection] |
 Library of Congress |
And don’t forget our newest institutions to the Commons, with photos recently uploaded and waiting for your perusal.
| Gerald W. Williams Collection: Civilian Conservation Corps From the Oregon State University Archives, a set of photographs from the New Deal era’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the Pacific Northwest. Throughout its nine-year existence, the program put millions to work on federal and state land for the ‘prevention of forest fires, floods, and soil erosion, plant, pest, and disease control.’ Nationwide, enrollees planted three billion trees and came to be known as the Tree Army. |
 Oregon State University Archives |
| Seminole Missionary Harriet Bedell These images reflect the lives of Florida’s Seminole Indians and the missionary activities of Deaconess Harriet Bedell among them. From the State Archives of Florida. |
 State Archives of Florida |
