George Eastman House celebrates their first year on the Flickr Commons with a few words about their achievements on Flickr. We asked Ryan Donahue (Flickr Commons Picture Mover) and Jessica Johnston (Flickr Commons Picture Picker) this question: “If you had to pick 3 things that being on Flickr has done for GEH, what would they be?”

What the Flickr Commons has done for George Eastman House:

1. Engaging and sharing Eastman House collections with Flickr users is fun and helps fulfill our mission to tell the story of photography. What’s better than that?
2. Commons users are giving us a lot of really interesting data about our photos: thousands of tags, hundreds of comments (some insightful, some interesting and some funny).
   There is interesting work yet to be done on the data the project has gathered.
3. The Commons is exposing the museum to online communities that are new to George Eastman House. The Commons is also preparing George Eastman House for the Museum 2.0 movement that is opening new lines of communication and creating conversation between curators and the public. The Commons has fostered George Eastman House’s relationship with innovators in this movement, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Library of Congress.

Jiu-Jitsu for Women

Outdoor urban market scene

Happy Commonsversary, George Eastman House!

And thanks to Ryan and Jessica for their own words!

GEH as transcribed by Wordle, licensed cc-by

What is your job at the Powerhouse Museum, and what is your role with the Powerhouse’s Commons presence?

Paula Bray

PAULA: Paula Bray, Manager Visual & Digitisation Services. I manage Photography, Photo Library, Image Resource Centre, Rights & Permissions and just recently Audio Visual has moved into our area. I have been working on the Commons since we launched last year. I select the collections and choose images from each of these on a weekly basis ready to load to the Commons. I then send them to Luke (Dearnley), one of the Web & Social Technologies team who uses the Flickr API to upload them. Once made public, I add them to sets and groups and watch what happens. I participate with the members checking comments, tags and notes. I check the account several times a day. The Commons is a really big part of my working schedule now and I consume this with great appreciation.

Seb Chan

SEB: Sebastian Chan, Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies. I’m Paula’s boss and also manage the managers of the Museum’s Research Library; Web & Social Technologies team; our digital media teaching labs; and a number of national and state-wide digitization and online projects. I develop strategy and direct the general directions we take our around digital content and the like. I was much more involved directly in the Commons in the early stages but I still pop in to the account every week and communicate the learnings and usage data to our Director/CEO.

When did the Powerhouse first hear about the Commons?

SEB: George Oates and I were both speaking at Web Directions South in September 2007 and the conference organizers knew we both shared similar interests in designing for social behaviour on the web and put us in touch. George visited the Powerhouse and met Paula and during the visit mentioned that the Library of Congress was working with them on this “Commons project”. We immediately told her that if the project expanded we’d want to be involved. Over the months between September 2007 and April 2008 we saw the LoC go live and George stayed in touch with us so that we could come online second just in time for Museums & the Web 2008, where we were both speaking!

What lessons did you take from the Library of Congress’s first couple of months for your own Commons debut?

Sydney GPO colonnade

SEB: We were fascinated by the rapid take-up by the Flickr public and we were conscious that our content would be very Australian-centric. I had a long conversation with George about the global makeup of the Flickr userbase and its US-centricity — and she assured us that there was a sizeable Australian userbase. Because we already had tagging on our own website we were less interested in tagging but very excited about the geotagging possibilities — especially because most of the initial set of photos we were uploading were of places, buildings and scenery.

What have been the biggest challenges for you in being a Commons institution?

SEB: Initially there were challenges about releasing this material — something that was helped enormously by our former Associate Director, Kevin Sumption, who gave both Paula and I a great deal of support to let this happen. Whilst being the first museum in the world to join the Commons was exciting, it was also an enormous risk for the Powerhouse and there were quite a few sleepless nights thinking, “What if no one else joins?” Fortunately things have turned out wonderfully — even though we were very sad to see George go.

Newer challenges for us mainly revolve around the resourcing of the project. The Powerhouse traditionally hasn’t done photographic exhibitions in its galleries and so the resourcing of our photographic collections (of which we keep finding more in the archives and basement!) hasn’t been an organizational priority. So the Commons is forcing the museum to reconsider the value of these photographic collections and the potential interest in them. This is really exciting but also challenging — it takes a lot of courage for museums and their staff to admit that “we don’t know much about this collection or object”.

Whose idea was the just-launched Blurb book, and do you have any tips for other Commons institutions who would like to put out similar books showing what people have done with their Commons collections?

PAULA: We made a private book using Blurb BookSmart for a previous exhibition on modernism in Australia, using the images from our other Flickr account, to trial the software and we were really happy with the results so we always thought it would be great to make one on from our Commons images. I wanted to capture the participation that happens with our images and publish this in a photo book. The basic concept was to highlight the favourites and shared stories that have happened with our images. I would love to see this as a series that could be utilised by the other institutions. George Oates was conversing with us a long time ago about printed options and what we could all do together. The software is really easy to use and there are many options to style your own book — “Then and Now: The Series”.

Out of all the many discussions on your Commons photos, what’s your favourite?

Mosman Bay Falls

PAULA: The discovery of the Mosman Bay Falls location by lifeasdaddy. The sharing of this process was really interesting and we developed an ongoing connection with this Flickr member. We learned a lot from this process and continue to use this as an example of the social media participation that can happen through a project such as the Commons.

What photo from your collections do feel has been overlooked, or is a personal favourite?

Blue gums

PAULA: I am not sure I can pick out a favourite but this image, Blue gums, has surprised me that it has not received as much attention as some of our other images. I find this a classic Australian scene and the gum trees are like no others I have seen before.

What’s caught your eye in other Commons collections?

PAULA: I am really struck by the George Eastman House Autochromes set. I find this an incredible set of images. I was also amazed to see “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California” by Dorothea Lange released to the Commons and think this is a fantastic gesture from a cultural institution to allow this famous image to be used with no known copyright restrictions.

Luke ... in the Commons

Oh, and we happened to find a photo of our web developer in the Commons!

This is Luke our developer working on the Commons. The picture Luke is holding comes from the Smithsonian Institutions collections. This historical image is the spitting-image of Luke and it got a lot of laughs in the office. So we put the challenge out to you: Find someone in the Commons — a very different then-and-now!

And finally, if you got your hands on the Flickr devs’ pixie-dust supply, what piece of code would you create to enhance the Commons’ functionality or experience?

PAULA: Extend the function of groups maybe include the ability for sets.

SEB: User-submitted geotagging — “Is this the right location?” — and institutional pages like Places/Nearby to aggregate multiple institutional account content into one place.

Mary McKercher

Mary, what is your involvement with the Brooklyn Museum and the Mut Expedition?

Based on work I had done for another expedition, Richard Fazzini, Curator of Egyptian art at the museum and Director of the Mut Expedition, hired me as expedition photographer in 1979. We first met face-to-face at the site and were married later that year. I am still the expedition photographer but I get involved in the digging as well since I am trained in archaeology and speak reasonable Arabic. Back in Brooklyn I handle the post-season photo work and have lately become interested in studying the pottery we have found.

Going back to the Mut Precinct year after year is the best part of the job. Luxor is a beautiful place and there is always the curiosity about what we will find this year. We also have many Egyptian, European and American friends and colleagues whom we only see in Egypt. Not only is it fun to catch up with the news, but the chance to work with people we like and respect and to talk to colleagues about what we are doing while we are doing it can be very useful.

Mut & Amun

What is the Mut Expedition?

The 20+ acre Mut Precinct, part of the Karnak temple complex, lies about 100 yards south of the Amun Precinct to which it is linked by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes. It contains the Mut Temple (surrounded on 3 sides by a sacred lake called the Isheru), two other large temples, a number of smaller chapels, and remains of domestic buildings of various periods.

Mut, the consort of Amun and mother of the moon-god Khonsu, had 2 forms, like many Egyptian goddesses: beneficent Mut, and fierce Sakhmet, who protected Egypt but could destroy it if angered. This dual nature is the reason for the many large statues of lioness-headed Sakhmet at the site. Rituals to keep Mut/Sakhmet happy often involved singing, dancing, eating and drinking.

The earliest official dig took place in 1895-97 and was led by two Englishwomen, Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay, the first women to lead an archaeological expedition in Egypt Although additional work was carried out by others during the intervening years, the Brooklyn Museum expedition, begun in 1976, was the first to undertake a systematic exploration of the site as a whole. Since 2001, we have shared the site with an expedition from the Johns Hopkins University. All work at the site is carried out under the supervision of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, which is responsible for the exploration, preservation, and restoration of Egypt’s rich cultural heritage.

Mary McKercher

What were your goals in photographing the dig?

Since archaeology is, by its nature, destructive, it is essential to document everything that is uncovered before it is removed. Photography is one type of documentation; written records, drawings, and plans are others. The goal is to record what is about to be removed in order to provide archaeologists with the information they will need when they return home and start to write up their fieldwork. Photographs also document the many objects, decorated blocks and other materials found during excavations.

Most dig photography is fairly routine, as you can see in the various dig diaries: mud brick or stone walls, the progress of restoration efforts, interesting small finds, etc. Occasionally, however, we do get a surprise. In 2007, for instance, when we turned over a seemingly uninteresting slab of sandstone leaning against a wall, we found a gilded and painted relief on the other side.

There was mention of the Imsheer winds and the sand that kicked up — what were specific challenges to photographing this project?

Windy Day

The Imsheer winds are always a problem. Working in continually blowing dirt is uncomfortable for everyone: it’s hard to breathe and your eyes are always tearing from the dust. The fine grains are also hard on photographic equipment, particularly digital cameras that are more sensitive to dust than film cameras. Sometimes the only thing you can do is turn your back to the wind, cover your face (and camera) and wait for that gust to pass. Most frustrating is when you’ve spent an hour or so cleaning up an area for photography only to have a dust devil (think tornado) tear through, scattering dirt, twigs, and other junk all over your nice clean surface.

The heat can also be a challenge. By the end of the season it is not unusual to be working in 100° F heat on a site with no shade. It can be exhausting, but I wouldn’t trade working at Mut for anything.

I was interested in this photo of the lake bottom. What’s the story behind draining the lake? How did you approach your Flickr photos?

Isheru lake bottom

Actually, the sacred lake photo was a happy chance that was the direct result of work at the site, this time by the Johns Hopkins University expedition. While my main focus is documenting the work we are doing at the site, I also keep an eye out for situations or scenes in Mut and beyond that I think would make interesting photographs – like the shots of the Egyptian desert taken on the flight to Luxor.

I look on the Flickr posts as my opportunity to share a few of these pictures with a wider audience.

What role has Flickr played for the project?

We did our first dig diaries in 2005 and 2006. In mid-2006 Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology at the museum, came to us with the suggestion that we create a series of photo sets for Flickr to provide a background to what we are doing now and also bring the Mut Expedition’s work to a wider audience. We were a little intimidated – neither of us was (or is) particularly internet-savvy – but with Shelley’s patient instruction and help we eventually created 8 sets on the history of the site, our work in general, and certain specific buildings or projects. The purpose of both the blogs and the Flickr photosets is to help people learn more about archaeology in general and our work in Egypt in particular.

At the end of the 2008 season, Shelley suggested a closing Flickr-linked blog of photos that were more in the “isn’t this cool?” category than the purely archaeological. This year we expanded the idea by using Flickr to share photographs that were interesting or intriguing (to us) but not directly related to the dig.

We get notified regularly of comments on both the dig diary and the Flickr postings, and respond when we can or when we think we have something to add to a discussion. This year’s dig diary seems to have generated more interest than previous years, which is great. What surprises me, though, is that we are still getting new comments on photos that have been out there on the dig diaries or Flickr for years.

What’s the process behind uploading photos to Flickr and the stories to your museum’s blog?

Posting the blog and Flickr photos is a real collaborative effort between the archaeologists, photographer and conservator in the field and the IT people in the museum.

When I download each day’s photos to my computer, I try to pick a few that might be useful for that week’s blog or Flickr posting. On Thursday (the end of our work week) Richard and I go through the photos, decide which to use for the blog and then one of us writes the captions. Our goal is to give people an idea of the flow and complexity of work and the excitement (and sometimes boredom) of archaeology. If the conservator is blogging, we coordinate with him or her so that we don’t duplicate efforts.

Since we have no way to connect to the internet in our hotel room, I load photos and captions onto a CD every Friday (our day off and the only day we have any spare time) and head for the nearest internet café. The 7-hour time difference between Luxor and New York works to our advantage: if I email the material to the museum by 9 am in NY (4 pm in Luxor) there is time during both our normal working hours to fix any problems, like photos that don’t transmit. Shelley and her team are terrific: the material I send Friday morning, Luxor time, is usually posted by the end of the day New York time.

Inside Abu el-Haggag Mosque

What’s a memorable story about this dig for you?

The most memorable event, for me, is meeting Richard that first season. At that time the expedition lived in a mud brick house behind the Amun Precinct in pretty primitive conditions -we had electricity and running water (usually), but it was not unusual to come across a scorpion when on the way to the bathroom, and we really did have to shake our shoes out each morning before putting them on. We have been together for 30 years now and still get a thrill out of each other and out of archaeology.

Any feelings as a photographer that the photos you took will someday be regarded in the sense that we regard photographs from the William Henry Goodyear collection of yore?

The 19th century photographers set out to show the world a country that was largely unknown to them and to the Western world at large. Their interest, therefore, was more in the picturesque and scenic rather than in scientific documentation. The purpose of archaeological photography is quite different: we are seeking to document what is found. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t superb archaeological photographs, but that isn’t the reason the pictures were taken.

There is no question, however, of the importance and amount of serious research material that is now available online. A number of institutions post not only dig diaries of their work in Egypt and elsewhere, but fully-written reports of that work as well. This trend will only continue and become increasingly important.

How can we relate the Goodyear collection to the present Mut Expedition?

This new group of Goodyear Collection images is an nice mix of daily life (such as the camels or the Assiut street scene), ancient monuments, Islamic architecture, and pharaonic sculpture. I find early photographs of Egypt fascinating, particularly shots of the monuments as they were before excavation. Being able to see photos not only from the museum’s collection but from other institutions as well is great. However, none are directly relevant to the Mut Precinct and our work there. Mut was rarely photographed by the classic 19th century photographers: it was just too ruined. I only know of a few, of which 2 are illustrated in the museum’s Flickr photo sets: one by H. Bechard 1880s (”The Mut Precinct Then and Now“) one by Beato taken after 1897 (”The Mut Precinct: Baboon Restoration“).

Occasionally there are photographs of areas near the Mut Precinct. For instance, I think the NY Public Library’s “Lousor vue du nord” and “Louxor” may both be of the village to the west of the site but can’t be sure.

Be sure to read the Museum’s blog post about the wrap-up of this dig.

The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

As the NMM in Greenwich is my local museum, I was delighted when they joined the Commons in September 2008. I visit the museum regularly as it takes up a large area in the middle of Greenwich and is housed in some very photogenic buildings. I was pretty excited when Fiona invited me down to the Museum one Wednesday afternoon to meet the team and have a chat about Flickr and the Commons. Having met them all, I can say I like the NMM even more now than I did before.

The NMM also organized and hosted our very first Flickr Commons meetup, held not long after these interviews. You can check that out too!

1. What is your involvement with the National Maritime Museum and the Commons Project on Flickr?

Fiona Romeo

FIONA: I’m Head of Digital Media at the National Maritime Museum (and Royal Observatory, Greenwich), which means that it’s my job to think about how we can transform our visitors’ experience of the museum through innovative uses of technology. In particular, my department is responsible for things like digitization; the museum website; and creative development of digital content and services — from a monthly podcast, to interactive exhibits and mobile learning. About half of my department is participating in the Commons project in some way.

2. How did you first hear about the Flickr Commons project, and why did you want to get involved?

FIONA: George told me about it! I’ve known George Oates for a few years and I think we hosted her first formal encounter with the museum sector, when we invited her to talk to a bunch of London museums about tagging in April 2007 (Tag, You’re It!).

Increasingly, museums and galleries are trying to do more “digital outreach”, which basically means engaging people with our collections, wherever they choose to hang out online. So, we were really keen to persuade the rest of the museum that joining The Commons on Flickr was a good thing to do. Here are the main arguments that we used:

1. To take our content to new audiences. Flickr has 47 million unique visitors each month, with 2.5 million new photos added every day.
2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge to our collections.
3. To reveal new connections between our collections and those of the other museums, libraries and archives on The Commons.
4. To make connections with contemporary photography of our subjects.
5. To develop our taxonomies and browsing options (”subject access”) in response to the public’s use of descriptive “tags”.
6. To make an argument for the lasting value of digitisation by helping us to further deliver on the access objectives of funded digitisation projects.

3. Can you tell us a bit about some of the challenges you faced in the process of joining The Commons?

James Watson

JAMES: We certainly needed to ensure we’d managed our risk as much as possible with obvious things like copyright. We also had to make sure we had the buy-in of interested departments all across the Museum. We still have an ongoing challenge because much of the collection of Historic Photographs is only partially catalogued, so we genuinely don’t know as much as we’d like to about some of the objects within it.

However, I’m pleased to say that we have plenty of stuff that we are confident about using for the Commons.

4. What process do you go through to convert your collections into digital copies?

Lucinda Donnachie

LUCINDA: The museum has both three dimensional and flat objects that require a different approach when it comes to the digitisation process. When digitising items such as globes, uniforms and oil paintings, an in-house photography team is used. Before the objects are shot they are checked over by conservation, so that they are looking their best, and transferred to an appropriate location to be photographed. We will often digitise around 150 to 200 objects of a similar nature in a three-week stretch before embarking on the post-production of images.

Flat items such as historic negatives, glass plates and prints are digitised through the use of a variety of scanners. For the majority of items we use several Creo Eversmart Supreme scanners, but for film we use an Imacon Flextight 949. The results of all this photographic and scanning work can be seen on our collections website.

5. How do you use the data generated by Flickr users, and has it been a help or a hindrance in your work?

JAMES: We check out information when it comes in and if it fills in gaps, or updates the information that we have, then we’ll review it with our curators and then add it to our formal catalogue. There’s a degree of uncertainty in cataloguing and we have to be targeted in the research that we do, so when Flickr users do additional research it’s always welcome!

6. Do you have a favourite comments thread on one of your Commons images?

Sam Oliphant

SAMANTHA: My favourite comments thread relates to ‘U155 at Tower Bridge’, 1919.
This photograph is one of our most popular images on Flickr and it seems to have captured the imagination of the community.

It’s fascinating to read the fantastic and varied comments associated with it, and the thread reflects the many and varied ways that Flickr members engage with our historic photos online.

National Maritime Museum

LUCINDA: My favourite comment so far has to be from our Beside the Seaside collection. It’s a photograph depicting a group of fishermen in Norfolk with their lobster pots . Someone has commented that you can chart a knitting pattern from the detail shown on the men’s jumpers in the picture.

National Maritime Museum

That sort of comment always brings a smile to my face as it reveals the eclectic interests of those viewing our images and the opportunities that come from our historic photographs. If ever a person wanted to know what the jumpers of Norfolk fishermen from 1903 looked like, now they can find out.

7. What is the most interesting place one of your images has ended up, or the most interesting way an image as been used as a result of your Commons participation?

SAMANTHA: Since we’ve started uploading our images to Flickr Commons with “No known copyright restrictions”, they’ve been used in lots of interesting ways. It’s always exciting to find blogs that feature our historic photographs because it’s great to see our photos being discussed online.

So far we’ve found our images bookmarked on sites like FFFFOUND!, used in montages, included in collaborative albums on Fotonauts, and added to Wikimedia Commons.
But it’s most interesting when our photographs are included in online galleries such as Tumblr Image Viewer. In these galleries our photos often appear alongside images that may, at first sight, seem unrelated. The images, which can be drawn from across the Web, are often only related to each other by their resonance with the user and it’s great to see Flickr members responding to our photos in that way.

8. If you could wish for anything, what additional ability or functionality do you wish you had with The Commons?

JAMES: I hope this doesn’t sound boring, but it’d be good to be able to specify date ranges and “about” dates! And although it’s great to flexibly link content between the Commons and the rest of Flickr, it’d be good if there was a way of clearly showing that the photos belonged to the Commons.

I’d also like more functionality with the statistics, the ability to export tabular data and more flexibility with sorting, filtering and manipulating the information.

9. What has surprised you most since joining the Commons?

FIONA: Two things have really stood out for me and I think they represent the two poles of Flickr. First up, we’ve had people on Flickr encouraging us to behave more like a museum; to assert our authority by providing more catalogue information, rather than the light-touch approach that we started with. We’ve also had people ask us to remove user-contributed tags that they consider incorrect or culturally insensitive.

And then, there’s the smattering of ASCII art and animated GIFs in the comments, which is just a lovely expression of something like fandom.

10. Are there any new and exciting projects or uploads coming up you’d like to tell us about?

Natasha Waterson

NATASHA: Yes! We’ve just launched a new competition and Flickr group, Astronomy Photographer of the Year. We teamed up with Astrometry.net who’ve built us a special astrometry robot. It’s going though photos in the group and adding astronomical information to the photos automatically using notes and machine tags. We’re hoping developers will get their hands on the tags and start making some cool stuff with them — perhaps even a huge collage of everyone’s space pictures.

In October, we’re celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Greenwich Meridian being designated as the Prime Meridian of the world. To mark the occasion we’ll be putting a selection of historical photos of the line on the Commons: it seems as though the line’s been a place to strike a pose for a great many years!

FIONA: And we’ve released the first set of photos from George Oates’ curatorial residency with the museum, On the high seas. You can learn more about George’s residency from our Collections blog, or her personal blog.

We also recorded a short interview with George when she was here.

Paul Hagon is the mashup developer whose amazing mashups of Google Maps and images from the Commons were featured on Indicommons recently.

Could you tell me more about yourself?

My first coding experiences were back in high school when I learned the basics of programming on a VIC-20 and a TRS-80. This sparked an interest in computers, but my real passion is in design. I studied Industrial Design at university.  I was still involved with computers then, but mostly doing a lot of CAD drawings, renderings, Illustrator and Photoshop work (this was back in the days of Photoshop 1.0). After graduating I worked in the furniture industry for 7 years before moving into the web world.

I always had a fascination about how people interact with things. Industrial design was perfect for feeding that fascination — it has an extremely personal scale of interacting with an object.  Designing for the web is so similar, it’s interaction at a personal level.

When the internet came on the scene in the mid ’90s, I read lots of websites and read lots of books, taught myself HTML and never looked back.  I moved out of the furniture world and into the world of cultural institutions when I got a job as a web developer with the Australian War Memorial (who recently joined Flickr Commons). Since 2006 I’ve been a web developer at the National Library of Australia.

You have created four Google Maps and Commons-related mashups. Tell us a little bit more about them.

The first mashup is a Then-and-Now mashup. This sort of thing is probably the most obvious mashup for images from the Commons — everyone loves historical comparisons and seeing how something has changed over time.  The mashup displays historical images from the Commons plotted on a map, and compares any image you select to the current day location in Google Street View. I like the fact that as well as displaying an historical then and now, it is also a technological then and now — a static image and a 3-D immersive environment.

The other Commons mashup is a location-based mashup. It works out your location and displays any images from the Commons that are near you so you can immediately see how the environment has changed while you are in it.

What were the challenges that you faced in designing these  mashups?

There really weren’t too many challenges to getting the mashups working. It only took about 30 minutes to get a rough working concept running. When I was incorporating the images from the New York Public Library into the mashup, that provided a couple of challenges as there was no location data recorded.

Any technological hurdle you have yet to overcome?

At the moment my then-and-now mashup only displays the Street View image at the correct latitude and longitude and most of the time the user has to start exploring within Street View to compare it with the image from the Commons.  Being able to set the pitch, yaw and zoom to align both views correctly would be nice (although I do like the exploration that currently takes place).  I’ve got a few ideas on how to do it, but haven’t got around to trying them out yet.

What do you think Flickr can do to encourage mashup artists like you to continue extending The Commons?

Flickr have a huge range of APIs available to allow users to create interesting things and they have started to develop specific Commons APIs. But a mashup is nothing without good content. I think the institutions of the Commons have as much of a role as Flickr does in encouraging mashups.  The basis of the Commons itself is a huge step forward as you know you have no issues about reusing the images, given their no known copyright status.

And what do you think the institutions themselves can do?

The institutions can help by providing interesting images and providing as much information as possible (locations, dates). I would like to see more accurate date information, that could provide some interesting timeline mashups, but that can be very hard given the nature of the photos.

I have a been a fan of your work ever since I heard about it last year. Are the Commons institutions are as supportive?

The Commons institutions have been extremely supportive.  When ever I’ve shown them what I’ve done with their images — they instantly want to blog about it and are genuinely excited. They appear to be extremely keen to see how people are extending their collections in ways they may not have thought about, or in ways that they don’t have the resources to be able to do.  The Powerhouse Museum nominated my work for the Best of the Web awards at the upcoming Museums and the Web conference (luckily in a different category to Indicommons.org). One of the most amazing things for me is that institutions are actually reconsidering the type of images they are adding to their Commons presence to take advantage of tools like this.  As an individual, being able to have that sort of influence is incredible.

Flickr have been great supporters too. Last year I could always tell where in the world George had been giving presentations from the location of the referrers and blogs to the mashups.

If you had the time to, what kind of project would you undertake to further extend The Commons?

Ice mask, C.T. Madigan

I think The Commons is unique in that it’s probably the first really successful online global collaboration between collecting institutions that has occurred.  There have been various things done on local and national levels, but nothing global.  We’ve seen plenty of images on the same topic from different institutions being brought together in the Commons. What else do these institutions have in common that isn’t being displayed, and things that aren’t just photos? Can we create something where an image in the Commons is related back to another item in a different institution’s collection?

For instance, the State Library of New South Wales has an amazing photograph taken by Frank Hurley of Cecil Madigan during his Antarctic expedition. The National Library of Australia has the diaries of Frank Hurley from this exhibition in their collection.  Can the Commons be the glue that ties this process all together? Maybe something could be done using machine tags as pointers to a mashup.

Any advice for potential mashup artists thinking of remixing the Commons?

Just try things out, explore and play around with the APIs that Flickr offers and let your imagination run wild.  Both of these ideas came to me after I had too much coffee and couldn’t sleep, so maybe a strong espresso before bedtime might help too!

waferbaby

We tried to find out from Daniel Bogan, the Australian Flickr developer who goes by “waferbaby”, just what was built to drive The Commons for its launch a year ago. Here’s what we learned:

Tell us a little bit about yourself? What is Waferbaby?

I’ve been a bit of a web geek for over a decade now, accidentally falling into the industry. I do web development work — the back end stuff, the bits of a site you never really see. Though I do dabble in front end work now and then, badly.

I mostly write PHP (for work) and Ruby (for fun) code.

And “waferbaby” was originally going to be a comic label, and ended up becoming my online “persona”. Go figure.

What’s your involvement with The Commons?

I came on board The Commons a little after it kicked off, when it started gaining some momentum and needed a bunch of work done. I built the underbelly of Commons pages and a bunch of admin tools for both us and for the institutions, and I’m maintaining them and adding new bits and pieces as we go forward.

It’s definitely the best project I can remember working on, or at least the most rewarding.

When I go to The Commons photostreams or photo pages, they look to me like any other page. What sort of underbelly and tools were needed that the rest of us don’t need or have?

Actually, there’s surprisingly little that’s had to change — the only real difference is that the ‘license’ links to an individual institution’s particular agreement regarding The Commons. Apart from that, photo pages are basically the same as for everyone.

Otherwise, we’ve built a set of tools for us to administer things, and one for the institutions to control their staff, get an idea of what’s going on with their photos, things like that . . . but can’t talk about that :)

I’ll just have to make it up! No really, I won’t, but some time we’ll get you to talk about things you can talk about!

Hehehe.

Let’s start with a bit about you. What’s your job title, and what do you do when you’re not doing things for The Commons?

My work as Acting Chief for the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress is a lively mix of activities. With 40 very capable colleagues, I’m trying to make the 14 million pictures in our care as available and useful as possible. I’m a communication switchboard, project coordinator, cataloging teacher, and paperwork scrambler. For fun, I write about ways to read and research photos, and, of course, I enjoy interacting with the Flickr members tremendously.

Celebrating the Commons launch!

After 30 years of working with old pictures, it feels like I’ve come happily full circle. From local historical societies in the 1970s, where we spent time poring over old photos with researchers, asking, “Could that be … ?” or “Do you see …?” then running to a crumbling city directory volume to check a street address. Now, it’s a vast virtual reading room where people all over the world can offer identifications and debate their ideas by tapping the new online info sources as well as their personal experience and expertise. Flickr Commons has a comfortably familiar feel while also expanding enormously the number of people who can participate. I’ve got tremendous respect for the Flickr members.

Most people on Flickr assume that Flickr came up with the idea for The Commons then called the Library of Congress with an invitation. What actually happened?

The Library of Congress initiated the contact with Flickr, but it was Flickr designer George Oates who had the brilliant idea to create a brand new community space — The Commons, where many cultural heritage organizations could offer photos. To be clear, LOC is far from the first library to participate in Flickr. We called Flickr up, though, because we wanted to load a fairly large quantity of images and invite lots of tags and comments to better identify the images. And we couldn’t do that with the available licenses for photos on Flickr.

Our relationship to the photos is that of a steward. Unlike photographers who load their own work to Flickr, we don’t own the copyright for images in our collections. We needed a new rights statement that became “No known copyright restrictions.” The rights conversation and other discussions over the summer of 2007 resulted in The Commons launch on January 16, 2008.

Yesterday, Indicommons posted an overview of the Library of Congress. The Commons doesn’t fall in any obvious way into the mandate of providing research services to the U.S. Congress. How does The Commons help the LOC fulfill its mandate?

The Library of Congress serves the U.S. Congress and all its constituents, which means we’re the national library of the United States. An inspiring vision guides our work: “We will foster a free and informed society by building, preserving and providing resources for human creativity, wisdom and achievement. We continually strive to place these resources at the fingertips of the American people, their elected representatives and the world for their mutual prosperity, enlightenment and inspiration.” Offering photos through Flickr is a good fit for our mission.

What was behind the choices for the photographs released for the launch last year?

Library of Congress

Top criteria — The collections had to be visually interesting. Also, “no known copyright restrictions.” The color photos from the Great Depression and World War II have long been popular with people who already come to the Library to enjoy images, so we were pretty sure they would be well received. The news photos from the 1910s were chosen because we flat out needed help to gather more information about the thousands of subjects accumulated by the Bain News Service. We didn’t anticipate how many dedicated and capable history detectives would participate, so that’s been a wonderful surprise. The latest collection, travel views from ca. 1900, has been heavily used at the Library’s website, but there, too, help was needed to untangle place names and spellings. By the way, all the collections in Flickr are available at the Library through the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. We continue to have the primary preservation responsibility for the digital images as well as the original photographs.

What’s your own favorite photograph or collection so far?

Library of Congress

Too many to name! I tipped my hand a bit with the 6 images that open and close the set called “1930s-40s in Color.” Mostly, I love pictures that make you look twice; that leave you wondering how life used to be and how it could be different today. Through Flickr, new favorites often come from the community’s funny, creative, and practical contributions. They’re showing me new sides of photos that I’ve been looking at for many years — Women workers having lunch, Display of home canned food, Louis & Lola ?– TITANIC survivors, Reunited with their mother. It’s great!

Any last thoughts?

I hope you’ll get to meet more of the team members at the LOC; several of us are in a webcast about the launch of the project, Opening the Photo Vaults. Although no one person works full time on the project, about 20 skilled and dedicated folks are involved with prepping the descriptions, loading the images, and responding to the comments. We’ve got lots of ideas about other ways to participate in Flickr, too. Like inviting Flickr members to meet up at the Library for a tour of the photo collections. But for now we’ll keep scrambling to keep up with all the good comments that pour in.

Shelley Bernstein

The first in our series of interviews featuring some of the curators, archivists, collection managers and webmasters behind The Commons.

1. What is your involvement with the Brooklyn Museum archives and the Commons Project on Flickr?

I’m the Chief of Technology here at the Museum and I’m responsible for the Brooklyn Museum web presence which includes not only our website, but also the Museum’s profiles on social networking sites like Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and beyond. In terms of The Commons on Flickr, I work directly with Deirdre Lawrence, our Head Librarian ,and Angie Park, our Archivist, to help upload and manage content that is under their direct care. In addition, I coordinate with Deborah Wythe and Erin Sweeney in the Digital Lab, who help get those assets scanned into digital format. Generally, I work behind the scenes coordinating everything and you’ll see me working with the web community the most, though many of our team are now starting to respond using their own personal accounts, which is pretty cool.

2. How did you first hear about the Flickr Commons project, and why did you want to get involved?

Brooklyn Museum

I’m on Flickr all the time with the Brooklyn Museum account, so naturally, I found out about it on the Flickr blog. For us, joining The Commons fit into our community-minded mission. On the web, we believe in reaching out to web communities just like we would in our own neighborhood, so extending our collections to The Commons made a lot of sense to us. I had just been in a meeting with Deirdre a month or two before and she was thinking of ways to make the materials in her care more accessible … then The Commons came along and when I asked her about it, she thought it was perfect given what she was trying to do within the larger goals of the institution.

3. What were some of the challenges you faced in the process of joining The Commons?

For us, the issues have mostly revolved around fears of loss of revenue. By policy, we charge licensing fees for commercial use of all images in our collection and those proceeds help fund ongoing efforts to care for the materials, but at the same time we want to upload decently high resolution images so our Flickr community can get the benefit of more detail in the works. With regard to this issue, we’ve tried to make our institutional expectations as clear as possible in our rights statement and we hope the Flickr community values that transparency. This is a delicate balance and something we are constantly discussing and adjusting based on our experiences in The Commons.

An additional concern of ours is staff time. We have no full-time staff devoted to Flickr and a small staff generally, so we are all (Deirdre, Angie, Ed, Deb, Erin, moi) pitching in where necessary to make it happen. With the higher traffic The Commons can bring, we’ve had some trouble keeping up, so we are planning a slower release schedule and think that may help a bit.

4. How do you convert your collections into digital copies?

Brooklyn Museum

Most of the Brooklyn Museum assets that you see in The Commons today had already been scanned and fully cataloged. The Digital Lab is just starting to embark on a project to scan and catalog some additional assets which we hope to upload to The Commons. This is actually a complicated process for various reasons, so we are going to do a series of posts on the museum blog to illustrate the behind-the-scenes process and talk about some of the issues. Should be fun to watch that unfold and we will post links to the Flickr Commons group as we publish those.

5. How is your institution using the data generated by Flickr users and what challenges have you faced managing this data?

We won’t begin a project to ingest the Flickr data (mainly tags) into our site until Spring 2009. We’ve just finished a project (today, yay!) to restructure the Libraries & Archives part of our website and now that this phase has been accomplished, we can move on to integration.

6. What is your favourite comments thread on one of your Commons images?

Brooklyn Museum

We base our success in all areas of web on personal connections that people make with our materials. For us, it’s not about metrics or numbers — we really want to see people engage on a personal level. This comment thread appeared lately and I think it demonstrates the power of putting these materials online. Here Funchye is doing some research on her family and posted to our photograph and rather than trying to solve this puzzle on our own, I asked roketpad via the research thread in the Flickr Commons group if he knew anything about this — he did and posted back. I had known roketpad had an interest in our Columbia Exposition materials because of comments and correspondence that we had exchanged when we first posted those images. What I love about this is the personal connections and to me that’s what Flickr is all about. As the coordinator of the account, I get to know roketpad based on his engagement with the materials and then can ask him about something about this woman’s photo of her Grandfather. Super.

7. What is the most interesting place one of your images has ended up, or the most interesting way an image as been used as a result of your Commons participation?

Ha! #7 on this list is my personal favorite.

8. What additional ability or functionality do you wish you had with The Commons?

The Flickr Commons group solved many of our issues. Prior to the group, I felt like the materials were disconnected from the rest of Flickr and we just were not seeing the strong community that we had come to know and love (the museum has had a presence on Flickr since 2006). The Commons, from my perspective, was this high-traffic void with very few people really engaging with the materials we posted. Once the group got started, suddenly everything changed and we started to see a community form around the materials, we started to get to know people and make personal connections. That has helped a lot (see question #6 for an example).

9. What has surprised you most since joining the Commons?

The group … read my blog post about why and now I’ll stop gushing over it :)

10. Are there any new and exciting projects or uploads coming up you’d like to tell us about?

Brooklyn Museum

I think you’ll see a continued release of the Goodyear archives which are currently uploaded but cloaked on our profile until ready for release. Deirdre and I have also been discussing trying to closely tie The Commons uploads with things going on in the building. In this way, we hope to engage both the people who really enjoy our Commons materials, but also the local Brooklyn audience who come to the Museum often and have been following our Flickr profile for years. In addition, Deborah and I have been working on another project to bring some of the other collection material to The Commons, which we will be blogging about soon. Stay tuned!