Mazarine says:
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 State Library of Queensland, Australia |
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 State Library and Archives of Florida |
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 Bibliothèque de Toulouse |
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 Bibliothèque de Toulouse |
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 Nantucket Historical Association |
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![Peter Drobach [on bike] 12/5/12](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3076/2458987269_363b710280_m.jpg) Library of Congress |
We celebrate the first anniversary of the Musée McCord on The Commons at Flickr today! With over 200,000 views on their 290 photographs, we cheer on their mission of outreach and engagement. The museum has been a vibrant Canadian presence, with images of architecture, family portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes, along with snow, hockey, and lumber.
A sampling of their images so far — to be viewed with or without a side of poutine, as you see fit (and BTW: yes, there’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to images of poutine):
| Their most popular image is this dramatic train wreck, from the set “Views of Canada – Vues du Canada (1858-1935) “ |  Collision between two engines, Bay of Quinte Railway, ON, 1892 |
| Many of the images in this set, as well as the museum’s collection as a whole, are from William Notman’s Montreal. He and his sons documented Canadian life and people from 1856 to 1936. |  Views of Canada – Vues du Canada (1858-1935) |
| In 1956, McGill University purchased the historic collection of the William Notman & Son studio, housing it in the McCord Museum of Canadian History, forming the Notman Photographic Archives. |  Views of Montreal – Vues de Montréal (1863-1925) |
| There is hockey! |  Being Irish O’Quebec – Irlandais O’Québec |
| Views as long as the day … |  View from Signal Hill, St. John’s, NL, about 1900 |
| And truly remarkable images of Canada’s First Peoples. |  Royal Tour: Aboriginal women and children, Vancouver, BC, 1901 |
| Cheers to you, Musée McCord — may your 2nd year be as fulfilling in The Commons as your first! |  Rustico Beach, PE, 1916 (?) |
Developer Aaron Straup Cope (he works at Flickr) recently released his impressive geotagging-suggestion Flickr application, Suggestify into the wild. Using this, Flickr users can suggest likely geotags for other Flickr users, including the institutions in The Commons. Aaron says,
This is a site to allow you to geotag other people’s photos on Flickr by suggesting a location to the photo’s owner. Likewise, someone else can offer you suggestions of where your un-geotagged photos were taken.
That location information is stored here until the photo’s owner approves (or rejects) the suggestion. If approved, the photo is geotagged on Flickr (using the Flickr API) and the suggestor is credited by adding a special tag to the photo.
The site is still very much in the alpha-beta-disco-disco-danceball-revolution stage. It works but if something sometimes doesn’t work, I’m not surprised. Now that the basic functionality is in place, I’m slowly going through looking for edge cases and gotchas. Please be sure to take a look at the list of known-knowns
So, anyway, I took it for a little spin up to Oregon. When entering a Flickr user or Commons’ institution name, be sure to enter it exactly as their screen name appears on Flickr. Select the photos you’d like to geotag, enter the place name on the map, and click the buttons to go go go!
We’d enjoy seeing what you end up geo-tagging in The Commons. And, yo, Commons’ institutions – why not sign-up for the service and see what users end up suggesting for your digital photographic collection?
Visit Aaron’s blog for a more in-depth look.
Here’s the video presentation of the talk that Deborah Wythe, head of the Brooklyn Museum Digital Collections and Services, gave at their 1stfans meetup, on the same evening as the Common Ground community-curated event.
She discusses Brooklyn’s first curator, William Henry Goodyear, and the Paris Exposition of 1900. This a terrific talk about lantern slides, equipment, digitization, colorization and so much more. The insight into Brooklyn in the late 1800s/early 1900s is fantastic. It’s less than 10 minutes long, and worth the time to watch.
And happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians!
Liz West (muffet) has been remixing other people’s photos with her own to create new, imagined images, and giving back to the remixing community as well. Recently she reimagined a historical image from the Library of Congress, bringing it together with a fellow Flick member’s self-portrait, a Buddha statue, and a borrowed texture — and creating a new, stranger war than Captain Felix’s presented itself as. See Liz’s Captain Felix for all the credits.
 Library of Congress: Capt. Felix of Army Aero. Corps |
 Liz West: Captain Felix |
We’ve been remiss in pointing out all the delectable new offerings in The Commons as our focus has been on events the institutions have held or celebrated. So, this week’s look at recent uploads contains a wealth of material waiting to be crowdsourced!
| Beautiful Lisbon, Portugal, from the Estúdio Horácio Novais in the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian’ collection.
Won’t you please help tag these phenomenal images in the language of your choice? |
 Lisboa: perspectivas gerais e parciais |
| They’ve also added some fun advertisements from yesteryear! |  Publicidade |
| The Bibliothèque de Toulouse, also needs your help tagging photos. Try the new photos they’ve added to this dandy set of transportation – on the road in France! |  Sur la route (automobiles, charrettes, bicyclettes…) |
| Visit some stunning gardens courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution! These historic glass lantern slides of gardens dated from the 1920s and 1930s, considered a “golden era” for gardens in America’s history. | ![[Morningside] [slide]: vaulted arbor in foreground with stairs leading up to gazebo](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2503/3953273826_d13693411e_m.jpg) Archives of American Gardens |
| View 3 African expeditions in this marvelous set from The Field Museum Library. This is a must-see collection which includes some real prizes by the renowned Louis Agassiz Fuertes. |  Africa Expeditions |
| The National Library of Wales presents some period sepia portraits from John Dillwyn Llewellyn and his family. A real treasure. |  Ffotograffiaeth Gynnar Abertawe / Early Swansea Photography |
| Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel and more are featured in the Library of Congress’s ode to America’s national pastime. Just in time for the pennant races. Those damn yankees, why can’t we beat ‘em? They also uploaded a slew of baseball photographs from the Bain News Service, too. |  Baseball Americana |
| The Powerhouse Museum also adds to two of their sets, images from Tom Lennon and Tyrell Collections. The big band era is in full swing here. |  Tom Lennon and Tyrell Photographic Collections |
| The State Library of New South Wales gets fancy with a pair of risque dancers! |  [set name goes here] |
| The Oregon State University Archives gets credit for most utilitarian set name with these cool photos of people doin’ their thing. Photographs by Herman Theodore Bohlman. |  People doing stuff in the Herman Bohlman Collection |
| Get your flight on with these historical images of Florida aviation from the State Library and Archives of Florida. |  Florida Flights of Fancy |
| The State Library of Queensland, Australia, dishes up a feast of good harvests to celebrate their state’s 150th birthday. Dinner time! |  At our Table |
| See more ruins and ancient monuments, from the Swedish National Heritage Board. |  Ancient monuments |
| You know the Galt Museum & Archives in Canada recently joined The Commons, eh? Check our this set of one of their curator’s favorites. Fun stuff – especially as Halloween draws near. |  Belinda’s Favourites |
| The children of strikers in Lawrence MA were sent to live with families in New York. It meant they had more adequate material care than their parents could then provide, but it also meant a poignant photo opportunity. |  Library of Congress |
| Coal miners in Lancashire were striking in 1912; their daughters marched in support. |  Library of Congress |
| Sylvia Pankhurst was a life-long protester on many issues, but on this day in 1932 her specific cause was protesting English policy in India. (Notice the Indian women behind her.) |  Nationaal Archief |
| The Jarrow March was a 1936 march to protest extreme poverty and unemployment in North East England. About 200 marchers walked the 300 miles from the town of Jarrow to London, along with their MP, “Red Ellen” Wilkinson. |  National Media Museum |
| January 26, 1938, was the sesquicentennial of British colonization in Australia, and was declared an Aboriginal Day of Mourning, a day to demand full citizenship rights for aboriginal Australians. |  State Library of New South Wales |
| A feminist protest in Amsterdam, 1981, in favor of abortion rights. |  Nationaal Archief |
Wedding party
The Library of Virginia isn’t one of the bigger streams in the Commons, but their 400+ photos since joining the Commons on October 6, 2008, have a lot to say. They, with the State Library and Archives of Florida, represent the American South in the Commons. The bulk of Virginia’s collection is from the Adolph B. Rice Studio of Richmond, and documents 1950s Richmond, Virginia: buildings going up and falling down, beauty parlors and department stores, bowling teams and wedding parties — the regular life of regular people.
The Library of Virginia explains:
Born in 1909, Adolph Bransford Rice grew up in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. The son of an elevator inspector, he originally worked as a mechanic for Otis Elevator. In the 1940s Rice briefly owned and operated a small family business known as the Rice Elevator and Engineering Company. He changed careers and became a professional photographer at the age of forty and established the Adolph B. Rice Studio at 14 N. Auburn Avenue….
Founded in 1949, the Adolph B. Rice Studio addressed a wide variety of photographic needs in Richmond, Virginia. It specialized in aerial and commercial photography and worked for nearly every major business and organization in the city during the 1950s. Clients included department stores, real estate developers, food service companies, television and radio broadcast companies, car dealerships, construction firms, and state and city governments. The resulting images document much of the growth and commercial development of the region in the mid-twentieth century.
Join us in wishing the Library of Virginia — and the people of Richmond, VA — a happy Commons anniversary!
 Ball game |
 Lowes of Richmond, woman in bunny suit showing a stove |
 Bowling team |
 Le-Wood Homes prefab church |
443 images made up the slideshow from the fantastic inaugural community-curated event, Common Ground; users voted for their favorites images from each of the (then) 27 Commons’ institutions.
Indicommons’ blog editor Stephanie Fysh exclaims,
The George Eastman House event was small but well-fed (Rochester has the best sandwich place *EVER*) and intimate in a good way. Loved meeting *so many* of the people who make GEH work!
| Live from Common Ground in Sweden – a write-up of the event by Johan Carlström of the Swedish National Heritage Board. | Saint Karin church ruin, Visby |
We had terrible weather so we relocated to the courtyard cafe but the meetup was great. – Paula Bray, Powerhouse Museum. |
 Getting ready for Common Ground |
But that didn’t stop people from having a good time with their cupcakes!Great night, good to meet up with fellow minded photographers. – Sutto 007 |
 Cupcakes |
| Common Ground: thank you Flickr community – a blog post by Paula Bray of the Powerhouse Museum. |  Commons babycakes |
| Flickr’s Dan Bogan showed up for their event – Nom Nom Nom! |  Listening |
| The Brooklyn Museum and the New York Public Library held a joint meet-up for the New York City event! | Joe, NYPL, Common Ground 2009 |
The Common Ground event at The Brooklyn Museum was awesome! I thoroughly enjoyed it!!! :-) And, it was great to meet Shelley! – nina kuriloff |
Shelley, Brooklyn Museum, Common Ground 2009 |
| Oregon State University Archives has a few sets of photos up about the event, including many pink and blue ball sightings! |  Dot head Doug next to the dots… |
A huge shout-out to Ryan Donahue of George Eastman House for developing the voting application and creating the Powerpoint slideshow presentation for the event! Congratulations to all the institutions who hosted the first global community-curated Commons event and to all the supporters.
You can view the photographs selected for Common Grounds right here on our blog at the Common Ground 2009 page. You can also view the show directly on Flickr in full screen here.
Photos and videos from arkland_swe, Powerhouse Museum, sutto 007, Paul Hagon, waferbaby, Brooklyn Museum and the Oregon State University Archives.
