What, you didn’t get out to see a museum today? But you still can! Treat yourself to a museum visit, Commons style …
 Smithsonian Institution: Samuel F. B. Morse’s Daguerreotype Equipment |
 Brooklyn Museum: Anonymous Man Re-Wrapping |
 Powerhouse Museum: Koala |
 Field Museum: Stanley Field Hall |
 National Maritime Museum: Turmoil & Tranquility framing |
 Australian National Maritime Museum: Model of RMS Britannic |
Polluted Area on Gulf Coast: Mustang Island, 100 Miles South of Houston.
In 1972, Marc St. Gil photographed the evidence and effects of industrial pollution in Louisiana, as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Documerica project. Several of St. Gil’s Louisiana photographs are available in Flickr’s Commons from the U.S. National Archives, including some that suggest just how new and incomplete our awareness of environmental pollutants was—and some that are achingly familiar today.
Sunny weekends are here (or on their way, anyway), and they bring the return of the Indicommons Craft Cabin–fun stuff to do with the images in Flickr Commons. Today, chalk art! It’s fun, it’s public, and it’s not all that hard to get an image that’ll bring a smile to passersby–at least until the next rain shower.
1. Start by choosing an image you’d like to chalk. Don’t expect to be able to get an exact image–chalk isn’t very precise–but look for something fun to spend time with. A black and white image is okay–you can add colors as you please. I’m going to start with this one: silent film comedians Billy Quirk and Josie Sadler, from the New York Public Library uploads:
2. Now use tracing paper to make a sketch of the image’s main elements, and draw a grid over the image:
Tracing paper, pencil, marker
3. Draw the grid on the sidewalk (sufficiently multiplied for a larger space) with chalk, and sketch in the major elements according to your diagram:
4. Color in large areas with fat “sidewalk chalk” to get a nice base layer down:
5. Then go back in and add details and shading and fine-tune the colors with denser chalk pastels:
That’s it! Chalk art can take a while–this was about 150 minutes from start to finish–but it’s fun to be outside and creating. What Flickr Commons image will you chalk?
Followers of the Library of Congress’s Flickr Commons uploads from the Bain Collection know that the news of the 1910s can look very familiar – the same themes turn up in our newspapers today. Crimes, scandals, elections, protests, inventions, sports, performers on tour. But occasionally, a story stands out as unusual, for the 1910s or any other decade. Take the case of Father Hans Schmidt, the only Roman Catholic priest ever executed as a criminal in the US. You can certainly find some awfully sordid tales about clergy misdeeds and the church hierarchy in the news today, but Schmidt’s is still a unique and chilling story, told across the photos in Flickr Commons.
Hans B. Schmidt (TOC)
Hans B. Schmidt was born in Germany in 1881, and trained at a seminary in Mainz, where he was ordained as a priest in 1904. Perhaps in response to the growing demand for Catholic priests in the US, or perhaps because he had been charged with forgery in 1905 and showed other signs of instability, Schmidt was assigned to a parish in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908. Soon he was transferred again, and finally landed in New York City, where he served at St. Boniface Church. The housekeeper at the rectory there was Anna Aumüller, an Austrian immigrant. Here’s Anna:
Anna Aumueller (LOC)
Schmidt and Aumüller struck up a romantic relationship; it continued even after Schmidt was transferred again, to a parish uptown. Apparently Schmidt even performed a secret marriage ceremony to assure Aumüller that their activities were acceptable. But when 21-year-old Anna became pregnant in 1913, Schmidt killed her in her sleep, and disposed of her body in pieces, in a pillowcase tossed in the Hudson River. It didn’t take long for the evidence to come to light, and for Schmidt to confess to the murder of Anna Aumüller (turns out the priest was a talker, so there are pages and pages of his own ruminations about the crime). The trial was, unsurprisingly, a media event.
Bertha Zech (LOC), a servant, one of the witnesses at Schmidt's trial
Schmidt claimed insanity at his first trial; that resulted in a hung jury. In a second trial, Schmidt was convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1916, at Sing Sing Prison. But wait, there was even more to the tale: Schmidt was also involved in a counterfeiting scheme, operating out of an apartment he rented. And, in retrospect, he was suspected of at least one other murder (the body of a child was found buried in the basement of his Louisville church). He also impersonated a physician throughout his life, and collected medical equipment.
Want to dig further into this true crime story? Check out Mark Gado’s Killer Priest: The Crimes, Trial, and Execution of Father Hans Schmidt (Praeger 2006), which is based on the trial transcripts and press coverage of the story.
Who?
That’s what I’ve been saying when I saw the name of the Portuguese member of the Commons, Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Calouste Gulbenkian doesn’t sound like a Portuguese name, for starters.
But today that same name turned up in the birthday rolls at Wikipedia. So today is a good day to learn how a Turkish-born British Armenian millionaire’s collection of art landed in Lisbon:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calouste_Gulbenkian
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!
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 |
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 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 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 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.
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?
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.
Cris Stoddard was among the first members of the Flickr Commons group in December 2008 and among the founders of Indicommons in January 2009. Cris has worked at Flickr since the fall of 2009.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.