Ever wonder what it is that museum and gallery curators do? How they decide what to buy, what to keep and where, what to show and how? Now’s your chance to find out! Ask a Curator is your one-day opportunity to pick the brains of dozens of curators from around the world, including from many Commons institutions. Find out how you can participate at AskaCurator.com.
| This week, eat out with the Nationaal Archief. |  Automatiek / Automat for snacks |
| Or keep company through the dog days with the State Library of Florida. |  Jesse Messmore Dakin petting dog while cat sleeps by piano in the living room at the Racimo Plantation |
| Feel the music of new jazz set uploads from the Library of Congress. |  [Portrait of Buddy De Franco, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947] |
| Go to the Expo with the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. |  Exposição do Mundo Português, Lisboa, 1940 |
| Take a hike with the Center for Jewish History. |  Blau-Weiss hikers with instruments |
| Tour Lockhart State Park with the Texas State Archives. |  Lockhart State Park – Combination Building – SP51_061 |
| Visit New Orleans with the SMU Central University Libraries. |  [New Orleans dock, lower left, with the French Quarter and the Saint Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square lower right] |
| Or get married with the National Library of Wales! |  Wedding group |
NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans, von Braun and President Kennedy at Cape Canaveral
Join us in welcoming NASA to its newest outreach post on the Internet: the Commons on Flickr.
NASA joins the Commons with three sets of historical images. NASA Center Namesakes present the people behind the names of NASA’s field centers, with a wealth of biographical information as well. Building NASA takes us behind the scenes of the construction of NASA’s unique facilities. And Launch/Takeoff highlights the moments that have thrilled us all who have watched NASA from outside over the years.
| New views from the University of Washington’s Digital collections range from dams and shiny new streetscapes of decades past to people taking in the view. |  Chuckanut Drive near Bellingham, Washington |
| Across the continent, the Nantucket Historical Association posts its views … in colour, from the Congregational Church tower in 1968. |  View from the Congregational Church tower, showing Brant Point |
| The views from the Powerhouse Museum are plentiful! 239 new images in all representing the broad range of the Powerhouse’s Tyrrell collection. |  Excelsior |
| The view from Oregon State University is international in scope, with new lantern slides and lecture-booklet photos from Niaraga Falls to the Middle East and more. |  Water Carriers, Nile |
| The Brooklyn Museum’s cathedral-focused gaze turns from Italy to France. |  Church of St. Quentin, St. Quentin, France, 1903. |
| The Swedish National Heritage Board’s new views are of Spain and Sweden. |  Göteborg (Gothenburg), Västergötland, Sweden |
| The view from the Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkia sweeps Portugal. |  Estrada Marginal Lisboa – Estoril, Portugal |
| SMU Central University Libraries bring us both the view and the professional viewer. |  [The Hindenburg] |
| While the Smithsonian looks around closer to home, in and around Washington, D.C., on a tour with Martin Gruber. |  Chain Bridge |
| Catch up with the Smithsonian before they head even farther from Earth … | 
Stellar Shrapnel Seen in Aftermath of Explosion … |
| Recent batches of photos from the Keene and Cheshire County (NY) Historical archives include may homes identifies with owners’ names. | 
Symonds, J. House in Keene New Hampshire |
| Upper Arlington Archives focuses its lens on 1918 and 1919 local history. This photograph was published as part of a collage. | 
Baseball Game, Panoramic View, 1918 |
| The Center for Jewish History also focuses on the First World War years and after. Identifications are welcomed! | 
Ex-servicemen at dinner on Rosh Hashanah in front of Synagogue at Kings Park, NY, 1923 |
| The National Maritime Museum has 27 new ships … and a few more that fly. | 
A flight of three Supermarine Southampton Mark II Flying boats … |
| From the Bibliothèque de Toulouse, photographs from Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, including stereographs. | 
Monte-paille |
| The Texas State Archives canvasses Tyler State Park. | 
Tyler State Park – Development Plan – SP.54.153 |
| The Library of Congress has been particularly busy of late in the Commons, with autochrom travel views from Italy and 219 photos from the Gottlieb collection of jazz photos along with more additions to the Bain Collection. |  Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. 1948 |
| Recent uploads from the Galt Museum include this 1927 Lethbridge, Alberta, soccer team, all identified by surname. |  Lethbridge and District Soccer Team |
| The Brooklyn Museums’s Commons collection of nineteenth-century photographs of religious architecture continues to grow. Few photos, however, include another camera and tripod, like this one. |  Cathedral, Amiens, France, n.d.. |
| From the State Library of Queensland, Australia, locomotives! |  Unloading C17 Locomotives from M.S. Belray at Pinkenba Wharf, 1927 |
| Like the Brooklyn, the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian has been off to church, and other, secular places and times in Portugal. |  Igreja do Convento de Nossa Senhora da Encarnação das Comendadeiras de São Bento de Avis, Lisboa, Portugal |
| Finally, looking for Nationaal Archief? They’ve gone on vacation! |  Gezin picknickt naast hun DAF / Dutch family having a picnic |
| Bergen Public Library adds drawing-styled lithographs to its Ole Bull collection. |  Ole Bull lithographic portrait with violin |
| Recent uploads from the National Maritime Museum include Victorian photographs of Greenwich’s Trafalgar Street. |  Unloading frozen meat from the ‘Clan MacDougall’ |
| Now appearing at the Powerhouse Museum, the Regent and St James Theatres! |  Auditorium of St James Theatre, Sydney, 1930-1939 |
| From the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, a world’s fair (or two), the Alfama, and the Padrão dos Descobrimentos |  Padrão dos Descobrimentos, Lisboa, Portugal |
| The focus in Upper Arlington turns to the year 1919. |  1684 Cambridge Boulevard in 1919 |
The National Library of Wales’s Siân Lloyd Pugh has published a brief report, on the blog Cultural Heritage, on the Library’s experience in the Flickr Commons. The report covers the Library’s reasons for joining the Commons, staff allocation of responsibility for uploading to and monitoring the account, and a wishlist of where the Library would like to go with it and its other Web 2.0 presences.
A few from June and early July!
| Montreal’s Musée McCord has uploaded new-to-the-Commons photographs of the city in earlier times, including some by William Notman. |  Gates to McGill University, McGill College Avenue, Montreal, QC, 1869 |
| From the Library of Virginia, a new set of photographs of U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 45, in the First World War. |  Dental clinic |
| The University of Washington’s UW Digital Collections on Flickr now include much more summer. Bring your bathing suit! |  Swim team, University of Washington, 1921 |
| The U.S. National Archives celebrated Independence Day Flickr-style. |  Gila River Relocation Center, Rivers, Arizona. Girl Scouts Drum and Bugle Corp. participate in the 4th of July parade. |
| New uploads from the National Library of Wales include these unidentified golfers. |  Two lady golfers, one holding the Llandrindod Wells Open Challenge Bowl |
| The Smithsonian Institution brings us 25 science portraits, some of which just might make you want to go back to school to become a scientist too. |  Fremont Davis (1915-1977) |
Mitchell Whitelaw and Sam Hinton’s fabulous alternative browser for the Commons, commonsExplorer, has had a major update:
We now load Commons collections dynamically through the Flickr API; as a result we now have a number of new collections, and more will be added automatically as they join the Commons. To fit all this in the collections grid now pans from side to side.
CommonsExplorer is “an experimental interactive browser for the Flickr Commons. It provides a “big picture” view of these collections – a rich, single screen interface that reveals structures and patterns and encourages exploration.” Find it on its website or in the App Garden. Mitchell and Sam welcome feedback as well, including in the Flickr Commons group.