February is Black History Month in the US and Canada. This is part one of a two-part Across the Commons, celebrating African American heritage in the institutions’ collections.

The Black List Project Podcast This panel discussion, moderated by Elvis Mitchell, interviewer for The Black List Project, continues the exhibition’s consideration of how race, history, and each individual’s striving shape and enrich their stories of success. The discussion, held at the Brooklyn Museum on January 31, centered on the future for black women now that First Lady Obama and her daughters have moved into the White House.

By Amanda Adams Lewis for Brooklyn Museum

Rebecca, Augusta and Rosa. Slave Children from New Orleans, by M.H. Kimball, circa 1863. rosewithoutathorn84 says: These children were probably dressed up nicely like this to create a heart-tugging image for northerners, thereby helping the abolitionist cause. Like a picture of a baby harp seal being used to represent all marine life, this is most likely a positive-propaganda image meant to arouse sympathy for those in slavery.

George Eastman House

Company of colored troops —Alexander Gardner, 1865 In 1861, the Government officially recognized and empowered the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization, to conduct inquiries regarding the sanitary condition of the volunteer troops, and to advise on the means to promote their health, comfort and efficiency. — New York Public Library

New York Public Library

Black man with white child and dog — 1890 LMangue says: This Barke’s gelatin silver print cabinet card was taken, or at least processed, in Council Bluffs and Missouri Valley, Iowa around 1890, well after Lincoln’s proclamation had been signed (1863) and had taken effect (1865).Before, during and after slaves were freed it was not that uncommon to see household servants treating white children as if they were their very own. Black servants did in fact raise several generations of white children. Children came to regard their caretakers kindly (in many cases) and might even regard their caretakers with the same affection held for their very own parents.

George Eastman House

Jack Johnson From the George Grantham Bain Collection of the Library of Congress, taken between 1910 and 1915, is this magnificent portrait of the great Texas boxer Jack Johnson, who became the first heavyweight champion of black boxing. Jim Jeffries, the reigning champ, refused to fight him at the time because of his skin color. Johnson finally fought and beat Jeffries in Las Vegas, NV, in 1910.

Library of Congress

Sam Langford Also from the LOC’s Bain Collection, this is a strong portrait of Canadian boxing legend Sam Langford, the “Greatest Fighter Nobody Knows,” whose boxing career spanned 1903 until 1926. This image was taken from a glass negative.

Library of Congress

Lee and Renee Harris pose on Easter morning in New York City. From the Smithsonian Institution: Creator/Photographer: Unidentified photographer Medium: Gelatin silver print Date: 1946 Collection: Lee Harris Papers Repository: Anacostia Community Museum Gift line: Gift of Mr. Lee Harris Accession number: PH 2003.7078.053

Smithsonian Institution

Color guard of Negro engineers, Ft. Belvoir(?), [Va.]This from a collection of images transferred from the U.S. Office of War Information in 1944 to the Library of Congress. Cashaw says: Yes, blacks went to the battle field to help fight racism. What is truly interesting is it was these very same people who helped to start the Civil Rights movement. My grandfather told some very interesting stories about WWII, and coming home.

Library of Congress

Young man playing drums during Kwanzaa celebration Photographed in 1989 by Harold Do and residing at the Smithsonian, this photograph celebrates the week long holiday of Kwanzaa, honoring African heritage. Ron Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 as the first specifically African American holiday. Karenga said his goal was to: … give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.

Smithsonian Institution

Paul Hagon is the mashup developer whose amazing mashups of Google Maps and images from the Commons were featured on Indicommons recently.

Could you tell me more about yourself?

My first coding experiences were back in high school when I learned the basics of programming on a VIC-20 and a TRS-80. This sparked an interest in computers, but my real passion is in design. I studied Industrial Design at university.  I was still involved with computers then, but mostly doing a lot of CAD drawings, renderings, Illustrator and Photoshop work (this was back in the days of Photoshop 1.0). After graduating I worked in the furniture industry for 7 years before moving into the web world.

I always had a fascination about how people interact with things. Industrial design was perfect for feeding that fascination — it has an extremely personal scale of interacting with an object.  Designing for the web is so similar, it’s interaction at a personal level.

When the internet came on the scene in the mid ’90s, I read lots of websites and read lots of books, taught myself HTML and never looked back.  I moved out of the furniture world and into the world of cultural institutions when I got a job as a web developer with the Australian War Memorial (who recently joined Flickr Commons). Since 2006 I’ve been a web developer at the National Library of Australia.

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Patrick Peccatte of the incredible PhotosNormandie has followed up on his metadata statistics for all Commons institutions by providing statistics on photos in The Commons which have received little attention. If you’re interested in helping to add tags or comments to any of these “forgotten” photos, his new post contains a comprehensive list of links to photos of this kind.

Patrick searched 18,290 photos across all 19 Commons institutions, finding that 5,123 had not received any comments, notes, or tags from Flickr members. That’s fully 28% of the total collection. While that seems like a large percentage, the underlying numbers are more informative. The Commons collection is very large in many respects, but it is still small enough that certain outliers skew the average significantly, as we will soon discover.

Let’s take a look numbers institution by institution, examining how many photos out each collection have not received any tags, comments, or notes. [Data collected on February 11, 2008]

Large Collections

Library of Congress – 44 out of 5,421 (0.8%)
Brooklyn Museum – 167 out of 2,554 (7%)
Smithsonian Institution – 327 out of 1,414 (23%)
Powerhouse Museum Collection– 336 out of 1,101 (30%)
New York Public Library – 561 out of 1,300 (43%)

The Common’s largest and oldest contributor, The Library of Congress, has had tremendous success in attracting attention and metadata from Flickr members. Less than 1% of their collection on Flickr goes without comments or tags from Flickr members. The Brooklyn Museum has had comparable success.  These institutions demonstrate that it is possible to maintain large collections while virtually no photos fall through the cracks. The Smithsonian Institution is also above average, although less obviously so.

The Powerhouse Museum has a primarily regional focus (Australia), which sets it apart from the other large collections, and falls slightly below the average rate of Flickr member contributions. The NYPL is relatively new to The Commons and has uploaded many photos in a short period. It may require time before the Flickr community discovers and interacts with these photos.

Mid-Sized Collections

State Library of New South Wales – 1 out of 250 (0.4%)
George Eastman House – 60 out of 592 (10%)
Nationaal Archief – 141 out of 590 (24%)
Library of Virginia – 93 out of 314 (30%)
Musée McCord Museum – 86 out of 236 (36%)

These collections, between 200 and 1,000 photos in size, show a wide range of activity. The State Library of New South Wales behaves like some of the smaller, more concentrated collections in The Commons. George Eastman House has a broad focus, more like the Library of Congress and Brooklyn Museum, with comment/tag rates to match. The Nationaal Archief is about average, but had Flickr member tagging disabled until very recently.

Like the Powerhouse Museum, two regionally focused collections fall below the average. Musée McCord Museum focuses on Canadian history, and The Library of Virginia focuses on the state of Virginia.

Small Collections

Imperial War Museum – 0 out of 10 (0%)
Australian War Memorial – 1 out of 42 (2.4%)
National Galleries of Scotland – 8 out of 107 (7.4%)
National Media Museum – 16 out of 130 (12 %)
National Library of New Zealand – 36 out of 161 (22%)
National Maritime Museum – 48 out of 191 (25%)
State Library of Queensland – 83 out of 152 (55%)

These institutions are pretty much all above average. The State Library of Queensland provides an exception but is so new to Flickr that it almost shouldn’t be in this list.

Smaller collections concentrate activity, and fewer of their photos are missed by Flickr members.

Non-English Collections

Bibliothèque de Toulouse – 378 out of 652 (58%)
Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – 2,745 out of 3,073 (89%)

60% of all untagged and uncommented Commons photos are from these two institutions, which are both from non-English-speaking countries. The outlier statistics from Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian require a bit of context, however. Unlike most Commons institutions, The Biblioteca uploads photos with a thorough set of tags, applied by library staff. It may be that these photos don’t need as much metadata from Flickr members, and thus receive less.

Conclusions

The analysis presented here is very simplistic, and reaches for only the most simplistic conclusions.

Smaller collections become easily saturated with tags and comments, but very large collections are also capable of similar saturation. Regionally focused institutions have challenges drawing activity through the entirety of their collections if they grow beyond a certain size, and institutions from non-English-speaking nations seem to have even greater challenges in this regard.

Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

To celebrate St. Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day, the Smithsonian American Art Museum invited artist/baker Zilly Rosen to create a dual portrait of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln.

The pixel portrait, formed by a grid of cupcakes, was a purposefully ephemeral artwork. After it had been assembled, the artists encouraged the crowd of onlookers to grab a buttercream filled cupcake and proceed to NOM.

• The Smithsonian Institution’s “CupCake Art – A New Birth of Freedom” PhotoSet
• outtacontext’s “Presidential Cupcakes” PhotoSet
• Daniel H. Pink’s thrilling first person account
• National Public Radio audio piece about the spectacle

Patrick Peccatte of the incredible PhotosNormandie has just published an article that provides metadata statistics for all Commons institutions. The article also includes detailed information regarding how each institution uses machine tags and photo descriptions, so if you want all the details, be sure to check out the Google translation of the original article.

Here are the statistics relating to comments, tags, and notes. The institutions are displayed in the order in which they joined The Commons. Links are also provided to the photo at the top of each category within an institution. These are useful for discovering photos that have received a lot of attention. [data collected between February 7 and 8, 2009]

Library of Congress, Washington, DC, United States

Launched on 16 January 2008, currently has 5,421 photos in 5 sets.
11,675 comments, for an average of 2.15 per photo. Max = 133
75,143 tags, for an average of 13.86 per photo. Max = 72
2712 notes, for an average of 0.50 per photo. max = 33

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia

Launched on 7 April 2008, currently has 1,101 photos in 27 sets.
1,464 comments,for an average of 1.33 per photo. Max = 97
4,619 tags, for an average of 4.20 per photo. Max = 34
305 notes, for an average of 0.28 per photo. Max = 19

Brooklyn Museum, New York, United States

Launched on 28 May 2008, currently has 677 Commons images in 6 sets.
[Following are statistics re-collected today Feb, 21]
1,508 comments, for an average of 2.23 per photo. Max = 107
4,875 tags for an average of 7.2 per photo. Max = 65
373 notes or an average 0.55 per photo. Max = 20

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States

Launched on 16 June 2008, currently has 1,403 photos in 12 sets.
1,468 comments, for an average of 1.05 per photo. Max = 68
5,687 tags, for an average of 4.05 per photo. Max = 43
238 notes, for an average of 0.17 per photo. Max = 19
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Happy Valentine’s Day!

George Eastman House	parkluck
THEN	NOW

A Then & Now for Valentine’s Day. The original was shot by James Jower in 1968. See the entire set of his fun NYC street photography from the George Eastman House. Parkluck saw this photo at Flickr, was able to identify the exact intersection of the photo, and re-shot it in 2008. I think they did a fantastic job at matching it up, and this is a great example of the power of the Commons to engage us with yesteryear.

With a big ‘Hello’ from the Pacific Northwest, the Oregon State University Archives joins the Flickr Commons today.

Coinciding with the 150th Birthday of Oregon, OSU is the first university to join the Commons. Beginning its Commons adventure with 117 images from the Gerald W. Williams collection focusing on OSU’s history of conservation and forestry, Oregon State has more uploads from the OSU Archives illustrating culture, natural resources, and history to look forward to in the coming months.

unknown photographer
Camp Sitkum wood detail
Oregon State University Archives: WilliamsG:CCC Sitkum wood

Chandra X-ray Observatory
RCW 108: Massive Young Stars Trigger Stellar Birth (A region of active star formation about 4,000 light years from Earth.), 2008
Smithsonian Institution: rcw108

Capping off Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary, peer backwards in time, 4,000 light years away, to the formation of new stars.

Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe.

You can help map the stars! The National Maritime Museum is holding an Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. They’ve teamed up with Astrometry.net too, to map all the photos in the group. Learn more here.

view + comment on Flickr

A collection of Valentine’s Day images from across The Commons.

We’re still celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday! Darwin’s book On the Origin of the Species was embroiled in a historic U.S. courtroom drama, the Tennessee v. John T. Scopes trial. The Smithsonian Institution has uploaded photos from this infamous trial to Flickr.

George W. Rappleyea

John T. Scopes

The seven scientists asked to testify for the defense

William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow

The Scopes trial was an American legal case that tested the Butler Act, which made it unlawful, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” In other words, Darwin’s theory of evolution was forbidden to be taught under the laws of the day.

The American Civil Liberties Union offered to defend anyone accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. Dayton, Tennessee, businessman George Rappleyea, sensing an opportunity for town publicity, talked the local high school football coach, John T. Scopes, into teaching evolution in one of his science classes. Scopes was charged on May 5, 1925, with teaching evolution from a chapter in a textbook that showed ideas developed from those set out in Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species. Famously, William Jennings Bryan was on the prosecution team and Clarence Darrow on the defense. Scopes was found guilty on July 21 and the case went to appeal.