World Digital Library

The World Digital Library was officially inaugurated today at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO — the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — to much herald and acclaim. This new resource is a joint venture between UNESCO, the Library of Congress, and 31 other institutions spanning the globe. Their mission? To make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

They opened their collection today with about 1,200 documents, and the site’s navigation and content descriptions are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Significant funding for the project came from Google, Microsoft, The Qatar Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, The Lawrence and Mary Anne Tucker Foundation, and The Bridging Nations Foundation.

Some buzz …

• Library of Congress press release
• UNESCO press release
• Washington Post, AFP, and BBC coverage
• Twitter chatter
• FriendFeed chatter

My initial thoughts about the site are that it’s easy to navigate and has a consistent approach to content with convenient features, such as the ability to zoom into documents and photographs with amazing clarity and detail. There is a handy timeline slider on the front page, so that you can narrow your search to certain dates and have the content pop up on the world map by location. Also, all the continents are well represented! What a treat to search across time, place, and institution so easily. The only drawback is the limited content (1,200 documents is really not that many). I’m also quite enamored of the Flickr Commons’ folksonomic tagging and crowdsourcing of knowledge, which of course this online library lacks.

On Twitter, we track the Library of Congress’s remarks …

@librarycongress: Factoid: The demonstration of the WDL prototype in 2007 was held at the Paris Hilton. True story. #wdl

@librarycongress: Press conference for World Digital Library had 104 journalists, apparently a UNESCO record. www.wdl.org #wdl

@librarycongress: At the World Digital Library launch in Paris. The president of Benin just walked by. HUGE entourage. #wdl

@librarycongress: Press conference announcing World Digital Library is overflowing. WDL.org #wdl http://twitpic.com/3pfnu

@librarycongress: 6 hours before “official” launch and WDL.org already has 700k pageviews today alone. #wdl http://twitpic.com/3pi66

@librarycongress: www.wdl.org More than 2 million page views today as of 1500 GMT. #wdl

Take a spin around the world at http://www.wdl.org/ — we think you’ll enjoy it.

Recent uploads from the Commons:

Celebrate Oregon’s Sesquicentennial with the Oregon 150 Basins collection! There are so many fantastic photos here of Oregon across 15 sets that I’ll need to write up a separate post to discuss all of them. And they’re geotagged, too! Get your canoe and get exploring!

Oregon 150 Basins

Smashing new photochromes of Scotland from the Library of Congress are a big hit on Flickr. Check out some of the Then and Now photos we’ve found.

Photochrom Travel Views

The State Library of Queensland’s collection of panoramic photographs shows us how the Queensland landscape has changed during the past 150 years.

Panoramas

The State Library of New South Wales brings us transportation firsts from Down Under. The amphibicar is a must-see.

Some transport and technology firsts in Australia

Visit the Swedish National Heritage Board’s new Carl Curman uploads.

Carl Curman – Sweden

The Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian posts many different items, including the beautiful city of Coimbra, transit, publicity shots, actresses, and futebol!

Portugal

Last week, Commons member the Brooklyn Museum won big in the Museums and the Web 2009 conference Best of the Web Awards. Here’s a big — loud — thank-you from the Brooklyn Museum for your support:

Thank You! from Brooklyn Museum on Vimeo.

This year, at an industry conference, we won a few awards for our work on the web. We couldn’t be there to accept and sent this video along in our stead. We want to share this with you for a limited time, because your participation in our efforts both online and at the Museum are what matter and these awards belong to you as much as they do us. Many thanks from our team. Note: make sure your sound is on and up loud!! :)

Say thank-you back, and help the Brooklyn …

On Friday, just before those Best of the Web Awards were announced, the Brooklyn Museum posted news about cutbacks in response to financial difficulties, which you can read in the message from the Director, Arnold L. Lehman. We’re hoping here that not too many of the people connected with the really innovative stuff they do choose the severance package.

There’s been a push, started by one of the leading conference speakers on Friday, to encourage more people to become 1stfans. The 1stfans program is yet another innovation from the Brooklyn: a low-cost membership level that’s more about social-networking community and online access than it is about discounts and separate lounge areas. How low? $20! You can’t lose — and it’s a win for the Brooklyn Museum.

The last day of the Museums and the Web conference in Indianapolis saw a full morning of demonstrations, including two on museum-based social tagging, and an afternoon of papers, including one from the Powerhouse Museum’s Paula Bray on Flickr’s Commons, paired with a paper about Ontario Science Centre’s YouTube meetups.

Here’s a taste of the Saturday chatter:

@briankelly: At. Museum Pipes demo at #mw2009. Cool. Must subscribe to museumpipes.wordpress.com Thanks Piotr Adamczyk

@publichistorian: Sending in artifacts for GOAC: some players found Smithsonian intimidating; others excited to have items they made “accessioned” #mw2009

@zbartrout: Loving the buzz ArtsConnectEd is generating. Dozens of museums inquired about how to their content in ACE. Seems like a good sign. #mw2009

@georginab: We’ve seen people having Meet Ups in our museum, and have been dying to know how we can insert ourselves into the process #mw2009

@georginab: 999GlobalEvent (http://www.youtube.com/user/999globalevent): I hereby promise to try and get the Smithsonian involved in this! #mw2009

@KPfefferle: On Institutions and User Participation: “We’re looking for a fling when we should be thinking about marriage.” #mw2009

@kresin: What constitutes quality of life for museum visitors? How to help them to have a better experience & benefit in their real lives? #mw2009

Closer to home:

@Timh01: Powerhouse on top of things with their Tyrrell collection of images on Flickr Commons – well done guys need MV on the Commons ASAP #mw2009

@nikkitimmermans: powerhouse on flickr commons: Tyrrel sales didn’t drop, general sales increased slightly #mw2009

@KPfefferle: I love the concept of embracing controversial content and facilitating conversation – even seeding with multiple viewpoints #mw2009

And everyone was talking about this!

@Vexus_Nexus: Metadata sounds nicer when Finnish people say it #mw2009

The “backchannel” talk on Twitter also veered off into its own territory: What does all this digitization to make so many of these things possible cost, anyway?

@frankieroberto: Wondering how much it costs to ‘digitize’ a single archive photo? Would ‘first person pays’ model work? #mw2009

@sebchan: @frankieroberto we do the first person already. Still expensive if you bring in perm staff costs. #mw2009

@NancyProctor: @sebchan @frankieroberto Good point; would it be useful to compare per-image costs across museums&share tips on economies-been done? #mw2009

If you’re curious about just what it takes to get a photograph from a file or wall in a museum onto the Internet or even just into digital storage, keep an eye on Indicommons! More on that soon.

Fujiyama, from Otometoge

New York Public Library	tarawo
THEN	NOW

The highlight of Friday at the Museums and the Web 2009 conference in Indianapolis was — obviously! — the  Best of the Web Awards, where the Commons community and institutions represented. (Here’s George Oates with the actual award for the Flickr Community!) But we hear a lot else went on Friday, too!

Over on the #mw2009 Twitter feed, people were taking about:

The Steve Museum Project — this one’s about user tagging, and what good it is anyway.

@10ch: Steve.museum results are remarkable. 88% of user tags found useful by staffers, 86% of which were new words to describe art. #mw2009

@smannion: Tiffany Leason on what motivated taggers: Curiosity, fun, to learn about art. Research interface didn’t exploit those. #mw2009

@smannion: Helping local museums document their collections was another motivating factor, especially for existing members. #mw2009

@smannion: @bwyman on deck with his ideas for tagging interfaces: 1) New tours based on single tags, e.g., images tagged ‘rapture’ #mw2009

Digital NZ — led by Commons institution the National Library of New Zealand — also attracted attention:

@homebrewer: Cool. Digital NZ lets users build a set of filters and then generate a custom search widget for their own site. #mw2009

@homebrewer: Data inconsistencies exposed when seen in combined results – crowdsourcing the cleanup to users. #mw2009

And Nina Simon’s talk “Going Analog: Translating Virtual Learnings into Real Institutional Change” posed challenging questions as well as provoking discussion:

@pgorgels: Museums as libraries… Back to 19th centuries study collections? #mw2009

@stevegardam: #mw2009 For Nina Simon’s organistional change workshop, how to make museums more like the web. Museums: friendly like Flickr

@georginab: ninaksimon: Don’t try to change visitor behavior, think about what they ALREADY do in your museum and how you can intervene. #mw2009

@smannion: @ninaksimon is concered about *physical* not online. If your museum doesn’t work in the physical world, it’s not gonna work online. #mw2009

But maybe it all comes down to baseball?

@smannion: Hilarious moment in @ninaksimon’s session: Q: If museum were like fantasy baseball what would you do? A: ‘I would trade my curator.’ #mw2009

More soon, including talk about the Commons!

William Notman
Horseshoe Falls from above, Niagara, ON, 1869
Musée McCord Museum: I-37300

Do you have a more recent photograph of this same view, from the same vantage point?
view + comment on Flickr

The Best of the Web awards are just now being announced at the Museums and the Web 2009 conference in Indianapolis! We posted here in February about the Flickr Commons–related nominations.

And now, among the Best of the Web are …

Best Online Community or Service:

• honorable mention: The Commons!
• honorable mention: Indicommons!
• Best Online Community: Brooklyn Museum Collection, Posse, and Tag! You’re It!

Best Exhibition:

• Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition (Brooklyn Museum)

Best Innovative or Experimental Site:

• honorable mention: Astronomy Photographer of the Year (plus complimentary digital astronomy services – National Maritime Museum)

Best Overall Website:

• The Brooklyn Museum!

See the full list of award winners here, and check back for more about the Museums and the Web conference!

Ryand, of the George Eastman House, shares some stats with the Museum and Web Conference about their most popular image in the Commons. 40,463 all time views 36 tags (one is “Hombre sin cabeza”) 4 notes 86 comments 517 favorites 1 set 0 collections 2 groups The title? “Trick photo, decapitated man with bloody knife, holding his head.”

George Eastman House

Heard around the Commons:

• Congrats to State Library of Queensland’s Tania Schafer for being awarded The Australian Society of Archivists’ Loris Williams Scholarship!
• How to mash up the Commons’ photos with Google Earth.
• A multitouch, multiuser mashup allows visitors to explore Flickr photos geotagged into a Yahoo! Map. Hat tip to George for the find.
• Museums and the Web 2009 Conference: catch the dialogue on Twitter with #mw2009
• The D.C. Public Library makes headlines as it joins the Flickr Commons at LISNews, We Love DC, and Aaron’s own blog about it.
• Check out DCPL’s Then and Now photo contest, too!
• The D.C. Public Library has also launched the first free library iPhone application in the U.S.!
• Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, edited by Mohamed Ally, looks like an informative read for anyone interested in the use of mobile technology for various distance learning applications. Hat tip to DCPL.
• Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum, tells us how to integrate Tweets and other social network comments onto our blogs. We haven’t hooked that up yet at Indicommons, but I have used this plug-in elsewhere and highly recommend it.
• Museums and the Machine-Processable Web: A wiki led by the Science Museum, London, for museums using (or thinking of using) an API.
• Interview with Shelley Bernstein and Paul Beaudoin (Brooklyn Museum) at the electronic museum about their API.
• Here’s a Python module for the Brooklyn Museum’s API.
• The Brooklyn Museum updates the look and feel of its web calendar.
• The Brooklyn Museum’s Judy Kim explains how Sun K. Kwak came to the museum.
• An update from the Smithsonian Institution on its digitization program.
• A fun online postcard exhibit by the Smithsonian Institution.
• The SI’s Keith F. Davis on collecting photographs.
• The SI American Art Museum’s Ghosts of a Chance ARG is a Webby honoree!
• The Oregon State University Archives helps celebrate 150 years of Oregon! Ooh … films, too.
• The Bibliothèque de Toulouse reviews John Crowley’s film Boy A.
• The World Digital Library will launch on April 21st, in seven languages. The project has been developed by UNESCO and the Library of Congress, along with 32 other partners from around the world.

Go Visit!

21 April 2009: William Shakespeare’s 445th birthday will be celebrated at the Library of Congress with a reading of his works by 16 professional actors from the Shakespeare Theater Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University.

Yesterday, we peeked in on a day of pre-conference workshops (and wifi hunting) at Museums and the Web 2009 in Indianapolis. Today the conference got off to a big start with what word on the #mw2009 Twitter feed says was an opening plenary address by Maxwell Anderson, from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, on “moving from virtual to visceral”. The plenary address will be published, but in the meantime, here’s a teaser …

@kevinvonappen: Museums online can let visitors be voyeurs of staff? Cool #mw2009

@kresin: museums should teach how to practice connoisseurship & help people be more judicious in life choices. #mw2009

@5easypieces: Anderson: “I think museums are afraid of emotion.” #mw2009

And of course …

@mia_out: Brooklyn Museum, Te Papa ‘build a squid’, Flickr Commons getting some love in #mw2009 plenary

After that, attendees had to start choosing from four parallel sessions in the morning and afternoon, before an “unconference” portion of the conference began. (Don’t know what an unconference is? You’ll find out before long if you’re a regular conference goer!)

A Park Ranger, John Harlan Warren, presented to the conference (about video podcasting) — a first for Museums and the Web and a fresh perspective for the more traditional museum crowd, who also apparently like his hat.

But we know you want to hear about Flickr’s own Aaron Straup Cope. Aaron presented today on geocoding and storytelling, showing attendees new ways to think about user-generated data, and showing them the concept of shapefiles. Here’s what some people in Aaron’s audience learned and thought:

@frankieroberto: Aaron: “we boiled the Earth a little. Using a country > region > county > locality > neighbourhood model.” #mw2009

@mia_out: Aaron at #mw2009 ‘Every place has layers of unseen history, I’d like to believe that’s where the value is.’ Museum mapping session

@zbartrout: #mw2009 astraub of Flickr showing the inaccuracy of geocoding. Tags often reflect what people are looking at rather than where they are.

@sebchan: *Beautiful* inaccuracy aka complexity of geocoded data – Flickr shape files fantastic for community projects. #mw2009

@sebchan: Aaron Straup-Cope is hassling Guy Debord. #MW2009

@nikkitimmermans: aaron introducing the word “psychosynthography”… do not underestimate the value of geo and photosynth #mw2009

@mia_out: Aaron at #mw2009, place ‘names become the bridge between experience and the memories that we have’

Sold on geotagging yet?

More from Museums and the Web tomorrow — mini-workshops and professional forums, exhibits, and the Best of the Web Awards!