We celebrate the 1st anniversary of Oregon State University Archives this weekend! OSU still holds the celebrated spot of being the only university participating in The Commons (but there’s more to come in the year ahead). With a little over 270,000 views on all of their photos, they have much to cheer about!
As both part of their Commonsversary celebration and the 2010 Winter Olympics, they’ve uploaded a new set of images, OSU Olympians. Pictured here is OSU athlete Dick Fosbury winning the 1968 Olympic high jump in Mexico City (and setting a record at the time!).
A mainstay of the OSU’s Commons material is from the the Gerald W. Williams Collection, consisting of the collected historical photographs, personal papers, and research library of Gerald “Jerry” Williams, former national historian for the U.S. Forest Service. There is a treasure trove of Pacific Northwest images in this collection; these are an important record of the history of the state of Oregon.
One of the newest sets in this collection, in time for their 1st birthday on The Commons, contains a wealth of trains and railroad photographs.
Workers, logs, trains, bridges – oh my!
If you’re near their campus on Monday, Feb. 15, 2010, drop by to see all they have to offer from the Commons, in the lobby of the Valley Library; It’ll be on the big jumbo screen Smartboard for a day-long slideshow!
One of the earliest and most popular sets of photos OSU Archives uploaded to The Commons is that of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a part of the New Deal during the 1930s, the CCC was responsible for building much of the infrastructure of the Pacific Northwest.
Enrollees fought fires on the Tillamook Burns, helped build ski areas on Mt Hood, built telephone and electrical wires, and improved farm lands.
More great photos of infrastructure being built is found in the Celilo Falls set. The images of this dam being built on the Columbia River are thrilling.
My absolute favorite collection of theirs is Take a Trip: traveling and touring with the Visual Instruction Lantern Slides Collection. There’s so much great material here, from historical and iconic images of great rails like the Shasta and Sunset Routes to images of the The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Their sets on Oregon industry are a great look back to how we worked and lived in the 20th Century while Early Settlement of Oregon takes you back to centuries prior.
And no matter what time of the year you drop into the OSU on the Commons, you’ll find something timely, in their Through the Seasons set. Here’s to another happy winter … spring, summer, and fall!
Today, we celebrate The State Library and Archives of Florida’s first anniversary in the Flickr Commons.
The State Archives of Florida houses the archives of the Florida State government. It collects and preserves historically significant records of the state as well as photographs, films, and other important documents that support the official state records. Additionally, it provides access to the archives, for research purposes.
The images – both photographs and film clips – included in the Flickr Commons are part of the Florida Memory Project. This project provides Internet access to primary records of important events in Florida’s history, as well as educational resources for students of all ages. Please enjoy with us some highlights of the collection on Flickr …
The Florida Commerce set is very popular amongst viewers of The State Library and Archives of Florida. It is comprised of publicity photographs that were produced by the Division of Tourism and its predecessor agencies.
This excerpt of an original film, entitled The Adventures of X-14, was produced circa 1965.
Florida’s history has been marked by hurricanes. The images in this set date from 1896 to 2005,
showing the devastation, tragedy, and triumphs of spirit the state has experienced after enduring so many storms.
Hurricane Ivan was the strongest hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. It made landfall on the U.S. mainland in Gulf Shores, Alabama on September 16, as a Category 3.
The Florida Folklife Collection is comprised of a selection of images that represents the work of the Florida Folklife Program. The program, consisting of 88 individual series, documents
the performances by, interviews with, and fieldwork surveys of folk musicians, artisans, storytellers, folklife interpreters, and other Florida peoples and their traditions.
Filming Florida consists of excerpts of films from the State Archives of Florida’s film and video collection.
This is an excerpt of an original film, produced in the 1950s, that shows a variety of water-skiing tricks, for the purpose of demonstrating the performance of skis made by Cypress Gardens.
Winter seems to be a bit “off” in the Northern Hemisphere this year — too little snow in the British Columbia mountains, too much snow in Oklahoma, and much too cold in the UK. But winter in the Commons? It’s always wonderful! See more winter and snow in the Commons.
Carol and Bobbie Ann’s February 1953 snowman, in Richmond, Virginia. (Where are Carol and Bobbie Ann today?)
It’s Advertising Week at the Powerhouse Museum — with 15 photos from the Rousel archive. “The archive is a significant record of the work of an important Sydney signwriting and graphic design studio” of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Don’t keep up with the Flickr blog? Then you might not know about the Smithsonian Institution’s Timothy O’Sullivan upload this week, of Western landscapes.
Last summer, during a roadtrip from Toronto to New Orleans and back, I took my family on a Memphis mini-adventure, to shoot a Commons “then-and-now”. After the Gibson guitar factory tour, after the tornado warning had ended (it missed us), after a relaxing beer and snacks at a Beale Street bar, where we chatted with the manager about MGMT and the kids signed the wall, we walked up the street in the drizzle to find #318 – or at least where #318 must have been. There’s no jitterbugging here anymore.
Nina Kuriloff is a New York-based painter whose selections from the Commons have enlivened our Best of the Commons posts recently. Many of our Across the Commons posts recently have drawn on her selections in themed topics in the Flickr Commons group, which this blog grew out of. This one, though, is special, because whether Nina knows it or not, many of the trees she’s discovered in the Commons, wherever they were found, echo her own paintings – Nina’s Trees:
![[Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President. Seated portrait, facing right] (LOC)](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3298/3252916341_a86b263d37.jpg)
