The NHA’s has been a quiet presence in the Commons, but its photographs of Nantucket’s sites and people are still being found by the people closest to them, and we celebrate those today:

“This is my relative. She also went by the name of Flossie. She was Chappaquiddick Wampanoag …” –wealthywamp

Almira West Williams

“This is my husband’s Grandmother … She passed away when my husband was young …” –sewcrazzed

Arline Wilma Preston

“I lived in the apartment just upstairs… just above where she is pointing …” –nippyfish

Mitchell’s Book Corner

“My brother and I worked behind the soda counter for many summers …” –natkg

Congdon’s Pharmacy, c. 1910s

Happy anniversary, Nantucket! And if you, reading this, or yours are from Nantucket or passed through, take a moment to find your history in the Commons!

Ansel Adams
“The Tetons – Snake River,” Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming., circa 1935
U.S. National Archives: 79-AA-G01

Indicommons celebrates Ansel Adams’ birthday today, February 20, with a selection of his images held by the U.S. National Archives. A statement from the National Archive’s website explains,

The original negatives were retained by Ansel Adams. Reproductions of items in this series are made from copy negatives produced by the National Archives. The photographic prints in this series are in the public domain. In correspondence dated August 18, 1942, from Adams to E. K. Burlew, First Assistant Secretary, Department of the Interior, Adams states that the photographs are the property of the U.S. Government. Ansel Adams visited the National Archives in 1979.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Acoma Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico

Taos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico<

Canyon de Chelly National Historic Landmark, New Mexico

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

I am a co-founder of Indicommons.

That sentence feels full of hubris, since many people ‘co-founded’ Indicommons; the position, if any, that Indicommons holds in promoting and supporting The Commons on Flickr is the result of many people’s efforts, all of whom can claim, rightly, to be co-founders of this blog and community. That sense of ‘community’ is exactly what makes The Commons vital, virile, virtual and viral.

The GLAM community this week (art galleries, libraries, archives and museums) was lit afire this week when the news spread that Flickr has disabled the registration page through 2010 for The Commons:

Due to the current backlog of requests, we will not be accepting new registrations or requests to join the Commons through 2010.

It surprises me, as both a co-founder of Indicommons and as, more recently, a staff member of Flickr, that some have mistaken this statement to mean that Flickr is not supporting The Commons or is not adding new institutions to The Commons this year. The only thing this statement can mean is (a) that there is a backlog of registrations that need to be converted to accounts and (b) that the ability to register intent to join The Commons is temporarily disabled. The Commons page is live, the ability to limit searches to only Commons material is live, and (the most important piece to The Commons) the No Known Copyright Restriction license is live on Flickr.

At the heart of it all, this infrastructure is the foundation for The Commons – everything else that makes The Commons so vital is actually the community. This infrastructure is why every report made by The Commons’ institutions since the project began two years ago states that their goals have been met and expectations exceeded. I think the strongest evidence of the power of The Commons is well captured by Seb Chan, Courtney Johnston, and Kate Theimer (ArchivesNext) in recent blog posts regarding the ‘debate’ about The Commons.

The Commons is vital: we all know this.

The community is the sum of the institutions that hold accounts on The Commons, the members who leave folksonomic information on the content in The Commons, and the staff who work behind the scenes to support the infrastructure of The Commons. Vitality is the living, breathing soul of this community; if the infrastructure brings the content of public institutions, no matter where they are physically located in the world, to people anywhere in the world with an internet connection regardless of their economic or social status and if that infrastructure lends new insight to that content, then The Commons is very much not simply alive but also vital. It is vital since it transcends physicality and propels content to those who may otherwise not have access to history or who have the ‘missing link’ that fills in the gap for archivists and enthusiasts alike.

The Commons is virile: we all should know this.

The significance of this should not be underestimated. The community is a reiterative edifice which is spiral in structure. It begins with art or history, it goes through an archival process which is largely confined within the walls of an institution, then explodes onto the public stage where new information fills any lacunas of uncertainty, thus becoming stronger evidence which answers questions about who we are or where we are or what we are and what we can become. And so the spiral repeats itself and expands itself, for as new information is pushed into the world, it provides more opportunities for new information to be obtained. This is the virility of The Commons. Through the community, archival material strengthens who and what we are in the global and local communities.

The Commons is virtual: we need to embrace this.

The miracle of all of this is that The Commons is a global entity composed of local forms hosted on a virtual stage (or platform). This platform is Flickr. The platform exists: it is here, it is accessible despite rumors to the contrary, and it is constantly expanding. It expands every time an institution uploads a photo asking, “Where is this? What information do you have to help us identify this event?” and the community responds with rich anecdotal or scientific evidence that does identify the event.

The platform will continue to expand as long as the community contributes to it and the servers are running it.

But the platform, any platform, cannot be beholden or trapped within some one person’s personality. I am a very strong and very opinionated personality. I cannot be defined as the public face of Indicommons or The Commons, depending on which role you choose to view me in. The cult of personality is anathema to The Commons in any form, especially when you take the term at its most base meaning: public. This is very much a public phenomenon, one that is unique; there has never been a project like this hosted anywhere.

Now for two brief stories. The Commons exists not because of one person, but because one institution (the Library of Congress) contacted a social media website (Flickr) and suggested the idea. Of course strong personalities made it happen. But that doesn’t mean that the concept is solely one person’s child to raise by themselves and by themselves alone. Think: Village raising children. Better still, think: Common ground raising information for a global audience by a global network.

My second story is that for months, I carried this blog on my back, then I accepted a job offer which left me no time to blog at any of the five blogs I currently manage, including this one. In fact, a few of the original co-founders of Indicommons are doing other things with their time right now … but there are people in the community who stepped into the vacuum. So, back to the first story: there is a team at Flickr who provide support for The Commons. This team has people, some of whom like the limelight and others who do not, who are passionate, emphatic, opinionated, and in love with The Commons. Any time anyone says anywhere that The Commons is in a state of decay because one person is no longer on the team or there is no team or there is no public face of The Commons is actually backhanding the silent, quiet effort of those whose jobs entail the support of The Commons. Worse, they undermine the vitality of the project.

The Commons is viral and it depends on you.

One only needs to ask, “Does this work for me?”

Does it work for you as an institution that you can post images to The Commons asking, “What is this, please?” and receive commentary on Flickr, Twitter, blogs, email and Facebook and within a matter of hours get data in the form of links to maps or other supporting documentation, personal stories, and metadata that enhances the value of the artifact you uploaded? And from an audience not limited to geeks or scholars but that reaches the masses wherever it is that they choose to hang out on the internet? The viral nature of Flickr itself makes this possible.

Does it work for you as an audience that you have access to the biggest names in Australian, European and American institutions’ archives; content that has previously been locked away behind glass or in a basement or trapped on a glass plate negative? Does it work for you that you can easily step up to the mound with new information to pitch to … The Smithsonian Institution? The Library of Congress? The Nationaal Archief all the way over in The Netherlands?

As a developer, do you like having access to an API and content that you can use to create exciting new places for the internet traveler to enjoy?

Does the viral nature of the internet help this project achieve and exceed its goals?

Then The Commons is very much alive and well, thanks!

I’m very excited to see the new content that will be added to The Commons this year, from both the current institutions and the new ones that are, as you read this, signing contracts and setting up their accounts. My prediction is that 2010 will blow the doors off The Commons so long as people peruse the content, institutions continue uploading and promoting the content, and developers build cool toys that add new dimensions to the content. Do you really need a cult of personality to lead this charge?

No, because The Commons is everyone’s plot of land to sow and reap rewards in. There is no tragedy of The Commons because culture is not a finite resource by virtue of its vital, virile, virtual and viral attributes.

The State Library of Queensland, Australia, joined the Commons – appropriately — on Australia Day 2009, and it’s bookending photographs today might span only 1912 (uploaded today) to 1916 (uploaded just over one year ago), both its uploads and its participation in the Commons have been much broader.

Since the winter, in June 2009, the Library has added its Picture of the Week from the Picture Queensland home page to the Commons.

French journalist Henri Gilbert, Barcaldine, April 1900

There’s no surprise, I think, that the Library’s Bathing Beauties set is especially popular!

Beach beauties, ca. 1939

In December, the Library treated us all to its own rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Seven swans a’ swimming (lead swan and a chorus of cygnets)

But the State Library of Queensland perhaps deserves our greatest affection for its set of Moustaches — contributed to the Commons not only in recognition of the cult following of Great Mustaches of the LOC, but in honour of Movember, the annual prostate-cancer awareness and fundraising movement that began in Australia. And while we hope that Movember may someday become unnecessary, we look forward to enjoying many more with the Library in the meantime.

W. Elliot

Perhaps it’s natural, while looking at old photos, to wonder, “What ever happened to that person?” Every once in a while, through comments, tags, and notes in the Flickr Commons, we learn the answer. Score one for crowdsourcing!

One such mystery was solved recently. This lovely image of a girl using a sextant to calculate latitude is from the Library of Congress uploads. The photographer was Alfred T. Palmer; it was taken in Los Angeles on a cloudless day in September 1942. “Learning how to determine latitude by using a sextant is Senta Osoling, student at Polytechnic High School, Los Angeles, Calif. Navigation classes are part of the school’s program for training its students for specific contributions to the war effort” is the descriptive caption.

Learning how to determine latitude by using a sextant is Senta Osoling, student at Polytechnic High School, Los Angeles, Calif. Navigation classes are part of the school's program for training its students for specific contributions to the war effort (LOC)

So, who was Senta Osoling, and whatever happened to her?

Almost two years ago, I tracked down a scientific paper that she co-authored in 1949 — presumably, from the context, when she was a chemistry student (her co-author, Alfred Deutsch, was a graduate student in the department of chemistry at UCLA). The citation is:

Alfred Deutsch and Senta Osoling, “Conductimetric and Potentiometric Studies of the Stoichiometry and Equilibria of Boric Acid-Mannitol Complexes,” Journal of the American Chemical Society 71(5)( May 1949): 1637-1940.

So it’s not exactly a source for personal details. This week, a much better answer came from Flickr user robertvaldivia:

Lovely Senta is now Senta A. Raizen and she is the Director at The National Center for Improving Science Education in Washington, DC.

Raizen earned an MA at Bryn Mawr in 1945, and was a chemist at Sun Oil before moving into policy work. The link robertvaldivia left with this note shows a recent photo of Senta A. Raizen, and gives a summary of her impressive career in science education. And that impressive career apparently started with hands-on science learning when she was a high school student in Los Angeles during World War II.

A happy first year in the Commons to the National Library of New Zealand, who joined The Commons on Flickr on November 27, 2008. Since then, we’ve learned just how active in new ways of reaching out to users through technology the NLNZ is, with exciting projects like DigitalNZ. And check the magnifier on their front-page announcement about their December move – we users like some fun as well as a chance to contributte!

But here at Indicommons, our heart is with the NLNZ on Flickr, and here are some of the ways …

Panoramas

House and grounds of R H Edie, Edievale, Otago, between 1923-1928

Stereographs!

Photographer and assistant, with a camera, between 1902-1922

Celebration of the end of a war

New Zealand soldiers and civilians in London at the end of World War I, 1918

Views of Antarctica

Photographer: Herbert Ponting

… and all the people and places of New Zealand.

Wairoa Geyser, Whakarewarewa, 1908

Robert Louis Stevenson’s birthday party, at Vailima, ca 1893

Huge sunfish thrown up on beach at Awatuna, near Hokitika, ca 1910

Close-up view of a Port Chalmers wharf and ships loading, 1870s

On October 21, 2008, the Nationaal Archief and Spaarnestad Photo became the first Dutch heritage institutions to place a small selection of their photos on Flickr in The Commons. Within two weeks, the photostream of the Nationaal Archief had over 400,000 page views and 400 comments. These large numbers were caused by the extensive amount of attention the media dedicated to the initiative — resulting in, among other things, articles in national newspapers De Volkskrant and Het Parool, radio reporting by the Wereldomroep, and, most spectacular of all, a prime-time news item in NOS Journaal (causing page views to rise up to 100,000 in one night). This initiative was started as a pilot project to involve the broad audience in photographic collections and metadata generation. The pilot proved successful: with almost 2,000 comments and over 6,800 tags added, Nationaal Archief has incorporated the use of Flickr as a standard feature for public presentation and metadata generation.

Recently, Nationaal Archief has launched another Flickr pilot: Mapit1418.nl, an online tool aimed at collecting geographical metadata on a selection of photos from World War I. Partly thanks to The Commons, Nationaal Archief has gathered quite a lot of data on this collection, but for most of these photos the locations are unknown. With Mapit1418.nl, the archive seeks to research what significant role a geotagging game can play in adding specific knowledge to its collections.

Mapit1418.nl is a mashup of two data streams: a subset of Nationaal Archief’s Flickr photos and Open Street Map data. A new and simple website was developed as a game “shell” for the mashup. The game is simple: select a photo, study it, and add it to the (suspected) right location on the map, adding an “argument” for that location (”I recognize that bell tower in the background”) or even a photo of that same location today. Earlier locations can be overruled by every new player, but selection of the “right” location (some degree of uncertainty will always remain) is in hands of the jury: every month, from a pool of the most frequent players a jury selects a winner. He or she (we see an almost even distribution of men and women on the website) wins large reproduction of a WWI photo.

Up till now, some 50 locations have been added to the photos. Since we aim at WWI “knowledgeables”, discussion tends to develop around specific themes. Some users disagree about the origins of a certain war vessel — a phenomenon we love to observe and stongly encourage. Hopefully it will lead to a just location in the end …

www.mapit1418.nl (sorry, only in Dutch)
Open now until April 24, 2010

The Flickr Commons project lets us see the 19th-century beginnings of photography represented in a very 21st-century space. And among those early treasures, we have reminders that women were there at the very beginning, some of the first to embrace photography as an art and as a tool. Consider these four founding mothers:

Anna Atkins (1799-1871) is represented in the Commons by her Photographs of British Algae, found as a set in the New York Public Library’s Flickr stream. Atkins studied science as her father’s assistant and made illustrations of shells for his 1823 translation of Lamarck’s book on the subject. She collected botanical samples, and through both her father and her husband came to know William Fox Talbot, inventor of the negative/positive process. By about 1841 she had access to a camera, but she’s best known for her 1843-45 cyanotypes (sunprints) of algae specimens. She collaborated with another woman, Anne Dixon (1799-1864), on other albums of botanical cyanotypes.

Fucus nodosus (1843-53), New York Public Library

Mary Dillwyn (1816-1906) was also acquainted with William Fox Talbot through family networks: her older brother John Dillwyn Llewelyn (himself a photographer) married Talbot’s cousin Emma. Mary was using a small camera in the early 1850s, and made a specialty of rather informal portraits for the time. After she married a clergyman in 1857, she gave up photography. Her work is to be found in the LIGC-NLW (National Library of Wales) Flickr stream, including this self-portrait from 1853.

Mary Dillwyn M.D. 1853 [self-portrait], LIGC-NLW (National Library of Wales)

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), who was raised in India, only started taking pictures at age 48, in 1863, when someone gave her a camera as a gift. Through her sister, she knew Tennyson and other writers and artists, and drew from their work in her subjects and poses. Cameron was also forward-thinking enough to get each of her images registered with the copyright office. She continued to make photographs when she moved back to Ceylon in 1875, but it was hard to get the necessary supplies there. The George Eastman House and the National Media Museum Flickr streams both include examples of Cameron’s work.

Ophelia Study No. 2, 1867, George Eastman House

Baby “Pictet”, 1863, National Media Museum

Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake (1809-1893) wasn’t herself a photographer. She was an art critic who wrote one of the first and most influential essays about photography as an art form, in 1857, declaring that “[p]hotography is intended to supercede much that art has hitherto done, but only that which it was both a misappropriation and a deterioration of Art to do.” She was married to Sir Charles Eastlake, the first president of the Royal Photographic Society. A Hill and Adamson portrait of Lady Eastlake (an early subject of photography as well as an early supporter) c. 1845 can be found in the Flickr stream of the National Galleries of Scotland.

Hill and Adamson, Lady Elizabeth (Rigby) Eastlake, 1809-1893. Writer, c. 1845, National Galleries of Scotland

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.

Who was Adolph B. Rice, anyway?

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

When she was photographed here, Mrs. Field was using a wicker wheelchair, pushed by the main standing behind her, apparently to tour the Bronx Zoo. Was Mrs. Field a wheelchair user?

Library of Congress

The answer isn’t obvious, because the zoo (like many zoos and other parks today) had wheelchairs for loan or rent. Notice the same model lined up behind Mrs. Gibson in this photo.

Library of Congress

Was this a common choice for tourists a century ago? The Commons has some tantalizing evidence that it may have been. Meet Madame Gardriol:

Bibliotheque de Toulouse

Another matron on holiday — this time, at a spa town in the Pyrenees. Her chair model is different, but again there’s a man pushing her and an umbrella handy for shade. Two could be a coincidence … are there other telltale images in the Commons? Look at this one, from the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893:

Brooklyn Museum

Flickr user Rob Ketcherside added a note marking the two people on the lower right of the photo, just below the pillars — that’s a man pushing a woman in a wicker wheelchair.

Wicker was, indeed, a common material for wheelchairs in everyday use, not just by tourists. Wicker wheelchairs are sometimes sold today as antiques (not hard to find online), and well into the 1930s wicker was considered a stylish, comfortable design element.

Walking in heeled shoes, in a corset, in heavy skirts and layers, balancing an impressive hat, as women of the era did, was no easy trick; for some, it was simply impossible to sustain for long periods. If Mrs. Field, Mme. Gardriol, and the Exposition-goer wanted to see the sights and dress like their peers, and they could afford to hire a chair, wheels were one realistic option.

Who are the men behind the chairs? These models are built to be pushed by a second person (not self-propelled). Were the men hired with the chairs? Or were they family, friends, longtime employees?

Whether or not these women were using the chairs as a temporary convenience or an everyday necessity, the spaces they traveled might reasonably have accommodated such conveyances, especially if the zoo, spa, or fair provided the chairs in the first place. How well? Were the pathways were smooth, the entrances to indoor exhibits wide, and the inclines gentle? If so, maybe the history of wheelchair accessibility in public spaces extends further back than the familiar symbols and features of recent decades.