Heard on Twitter

Heard around the Commons:

• TwitterLeague puts the Library of Congress as top-ranked Twitter library! NYPL isn’t far behind … and NLNZ is edging its way up the list!
• Don’t despair, museums, AOL Search has got your rankings! Getty’s at #3, and the Brooklyn and Field are on that list too.
• Tweets from the Getty:
  

  Feathers, guts, lipstick, mummies… American art conservators are in LA @ annual meeting discussing techniques! Follow along at #AIC20

• Apply for the Web and eComm Summer Internship at the Field Museum in Chicago!
• The Multi-Platform Museum: A talk given by Nina Simon at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History on 18 May. Take in the rest of her blog while you’re there, too.
• “Flickrization is also another step to preservation of urban history in the virtual realm,” by Jaunted: The Pop Culture Travel Guide.
• Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage, by Marija Dalbello.
• Past meets present in Flickr’s museum project, an article in the Vancouver Sun.
• Spotlight on Click! You can use the Smithsonian’s Flickr Commons images (or your own) with your stories to add to a growing collection … and Smithsonian curators will be looking at your entries!
• Did you know the Smithsonian is on UStream? They’re working on their social skillz.
• Smithsonian Hopes To Cash In On Stiller Movie, by Elizabeth Blair, NPR’s Morning Edition.
• The Library of Congress discusses the magic of Hollywood; visitors up nearly 70%!
• And the Brooklyn Museum was in the movies before either of them: Robert Redford, The Hot Rock.
• Crowdsourcing the Clean-Up with Freeze Tag! A new tagging game from the Brooklyn Museum.
• Book discussion of The Holy Woman by Qaisra Shahraz: A podcast from the D.C. Public Library.
• Below Ground: Tales of HVAC pipes at the George Eastman House.
• Carnival of Space: a round-up of Hubble news by the Chandra blog at the Smithsonian.
• Ludwig Marx: A Unique Australian’s Story, by the Australian War Memorial.
• Chirp, chirp: new Flickr Commons set! It’s spring and time to look at the pretty birds … from the Oregon State University Archives.
• Milstein joins the Flickr Commons! And the New York Public Library tells you all about it.
• Uncle Sam 2.0: U.S. Government Goes YouTube — from the Library of Congress.

Friday Fun!

Dear beloved Library of Congress: Can haz these short videos on Flickr, plz? KTHXBAI!

Go Visit!

Now Open — Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City, at the Getty. Can’t go? You can see the exhibition on Flickr and download the PDF file of the exhibition brochure!

22 May — Ernst & Young 3-D Theater opens at the Field Museum. Dinosaurs Alive!

23 May – RIT Student Honors Show at the George Eastman House’s Drysdale Theatre. The annual Honors Show highlights some of the year’s best student work from RIT’s School of Film & Animation.

27 May – Looted Art in Europe 1938-45 and its restitution since the Second World War, a talk by Professor Richard J. Evans, a renowned historian and one of the leading experts on the Nazi period, at the National Library of Wales.

1984 stage play featuring John Hurt — rehearsal
Photograph by Jim Moran

See photos from the rehearsal of the Orwell play 1984, featuring an exclusive video performance by John Hurt in the role of Big Brother, at the National Media Museum’s Flickr stream. The play opens on June 3.

Heard around the Commons:

• Radnorshire on Flickr — Can you help? The first British library to join the Flickr Commons is The National Library of Wales!
• The Field Museum is a nominee for the best museum for kids in Chicago!
• Clouded leopards cubs at the National Zoo (Smithsonian) — They are now eating cooked chicken three times a day, in addition to their formula.
• Learn about the Smithsonian’s first staff photographer, Thomas Smillie, and vernacular photography.
• The applications developers at the New York Public Library provide batch reindexing for Drupal + Solr. Also, an update to Infomaki is released. That’s not all … DigitalNZ and Brooklyn Museum API modules for python are also released.
• The Bibliothèque de Toulouse announces …
  

  After lengthy deliberations under the watchful and amused condescension by Jane Austen, this is the name of the winner of the Jane Austen quiz …

  Learn who at their blog.

• The Brooklyn Museum films Valerie Hegarty discussing her work in 21 and Fallen Bierstadt.
• Go behind the scenes at the Brooklyn Museum’s staff show.
• And they relate museums to the NBA.
• The finalists in the Library of Congress’s River of Words competition speak out.
• Library signs are metadata: an article from Aaron at the D.C. Public Library.
• Collecting/Recording the 2009 Queensland State Election, by the State Library of Queensland, Australia.
• Oregon State University celebrates their National Historic District status!
• The George Eastman House honors Flickr re-mixer pennylrichardsca, for her incredible purses!
• Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The Field Museum talks pirate with the Chicago Sun-Times. Aye, matey.
• Read all about the Smithsonian’s Chandra X-Ray Lab’s one time shuttle trip.
• Seeing the Invisible with Megan Watzke, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Friday Fun!

Go Visit!

May 18–24: The Bibliothèque de Toulouse announces Alors Chante …! de Montauban, a traditional music festival. The opening concert is free at the Park Montauriol.

May 22: Night at the Museum opens at the Smithsonian’s IMAX theatre … starring the Smithsonian!

June 1: Sun K. Kwak talks to teen artists at the Brooklyn Museum.

June 2: Are We Alone? Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Lecture at the Library of Congress, with Daniel P. Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Heard around the Commons:

• The Field Museum joins the Flickr Commons! Write-ups at Flickr and at LISNews.
• Give Mom a gift for Mother’s Day by donating to the Smithsonian in her name.
• Beyond the search box — an excellent slideshow from Paul Hagon on social media, APIs, and your collections.
• Picture Australia — wow, a very cool interactive site, and they have a Flickr group. Get inspired. Hat tip to Paul!
• New finding aids for April! — The Oregon State University Archives talks up its finding aids at the Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA).
• @nlnz — Learn how the National Library of New Zealand uses Twitter.
• Infomaki goes Open Source! – The New York Public Library’s usability testing tool is now released Open Source under the GNU General Public License.
• Photosynth — The Smithsonian Institution shows off its collections in a new way.
• America on the Move — A Smithsonian online interactive exhibit.
• Photography changes what we think “reality” looks like — From the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, non-camera-centric models for attaining realism.
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian — the back story about the props used in the upcoming movie.
• The Library of Congress Experience — A video demonstrating the LOC’s interactive exhibitions that integrate with their website at MyLOC.
• The LOC also picks up a new blogger!
• The Brooklyn Museum is the star of a new commercial.
• Behind-the-scenes — A look at the Powerhouse Museum’s photography studio.
• Stone’s Corner — The State Library of Queensland, Australia, provides insight into the history of this Brisbane suburb.

Go Visit!

• Now Open: Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video at the Brooklyn Museum.
• Throughout May: Asian Pacific American Heritage Month at the Smithsonian Institution.
• Throughout May: Jewish American Heritage Month at the Library of Congress.
• May 9: Gallery of Modern Art May Highlights Tour at the National Galleries of Scotland
• Opening May 9: Not a Cornfield, a photography/video installation at the George Eastman House. Catch a video of artist Lauren Bon and the installation team on the “Earth Pillow” piece. Also, Don McCullin — in England, images by the famed British photographer, and Animalism, “contemporary media responses to our complex and sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the animal world.”
• May 9 & 10: Mom’s Weekend at Oregon State University!
• May 13: Water: Sustaining Our Blue Planet at the Field Museum, a talk with Jeffrey Sachs and Peter Annin.

Your Friday Fun:

-hat tip to george for this one!

Werner Company
The Edison Electrical Tower, 1893
Field Museum Library: GN90799d_CG_112w

With the entry of Chicago’s Field Museum into the Flickr Commons last week, we noticed that we have a very good collection across the Commons of photographs from the historic 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (a.k.a. Chicago World’s Fair). Held at a crucial time in that city’s history after the ruin of the Great Fire, this fair focused on the stunning technologies of electricity and the elegant architectural planning of Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted. The fair led to a revolution in how cities were planned, and can be seen as a starting point for the urban planning profession as we know it. The above photograph depicts the Edison “Genii of Electricity” … however, Edison’s DC current technology lost its bid to light up the Exposition to Westinghouse and Tesla’s AC current.

The Smithsonian Institution coordinated all of the U.S. Government exhibits and prepared a display on its activities and collections for the Exposition. This is the south canal and the Electricity Building.

Smithsonian Institution

The Brooklyn Museum has holdings of the Exposition from its Goodyear Archival Collection. This is the same location as above, but shot with a narrower lens.

Brooklyn Museum

The Field Museum has a wealth of photos of the Exposition from photographer William Henry Jackson. This is the same view north as above, between the Electricity and Manufactures-Liberal Arts Buildings.

Field Museum Library.

The Ferris wheel made its first appearance at the Exposition. Built by George Ferris, this 264-foot-high carnival ride had 36 cars, each of which held up to 60 people. One car even had a band that played when the wheel was in motion. The view from the top? Sweeping.

Field Museum Library

Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

Field Museum Library

The Field Museum’s contribution to the Commons is important in these ways:

Lots of photos of exhibits, on the inside of the buildings. The montage shots of the various state buildings — sorely lacking on the Internet. Colored illustrations, to add life to the black and white photos. Photos from after the fair. In the Field’s “Field Columbian Museum” set, there are photos of Jackson Park from up to 20 years after the fair. You can pick out items on exhibit which are also shown in the fair photos.

Field Museum

A challenge for you, the viewer: With this wealth of photography all of the same event, can you recreate a panorama or mashup that shows the breadth of the exhibition? Here’s a starter for you by Brian Karpuk (newsburgler on Flickr); he’s got a few great Expo write-ups for more info:

Panorama of the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893

Here are also two nifty overlays of the Expo mapped in Google Earth or in your browser with a plug-in. Maybe someone enterprising can combine this data with the photos and the photo overlay info we posted about earlier this week. Fun!

We hope this tantalizes you into contributing your research to the Commons photos and inspires you to take these images and re-create the long-gone White City in all its grandeur.

Recent uploads from the Commons:

The Field Museum in Chicago entered the Commons last week with a wealth of sets. Here are a few you shouldn’t miss, starting with the archives of their early years.

Field Columbian Museum (1894-1920)

The museum opened in 1894, located in the Palace of Fine Arts building on the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

Colorful scenes from the Wildflower Preservation Society, Illinois Chapter, 1902.

Flower Children

The Flickr Commons group loves animals, and the Field Museum does not disappoint!

Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago

Timber! The Oregon State University Archives posts the Harold Frodsham Photograph Collection, including images of lumber mills in Oregon during Frodsham’s tour of mills in Oregon and northern California.

The Harold Frodsham Collection Images of Oregon’s Mills

Like a good mystery? Then join the Powerhouse Museum on a Palmer Mystery Hike with photographer Thomas Lennon.

Thomas Lennon Photographic Collection

Workers of the World Unite! Or at least do that on May Day. The Nationaal Archief brings us images of May Days past.

1 mei / Labour Day

From the Brooklyn Museum, installation shots of Tavares Strachan’s The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project), 2004-08. A 2.5-ton block of ice from the Arctic!

Arctic Ice Project Installation

The Library of Congress posts 50 more photos from the Bain News Service: baseball, diplomats and great mustaches!

News in the 1910s

The Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian always delights with their black and white architecture images. These are by Robert Chester Smith.

Talha em Elvas, Portugal

They also have wonderful photographs by Smith of the beautiful Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Lisbon.

Igreja dos Anjos, Lisboa, Portugal

Idyllic scenes of tranquil Lysekil, Sweden, from the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Carl Curman – Sweden

The Field Museum Library is now on the Flickr Commons, with stellar images of Chicago and Illinois and dinosaurs!

The Field Museum Library’s collections began in 1894 with the libraries of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Their collection includes images of Anthropology, Botany, Geology, and Zoology, as well as documents the history and architecture of the Museum, its exhibitions, staff and scientific expeditions.

I’m an American West history buff, so I was delighted find some of noted photographer William Henry Jackson’s work from the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo in this collection. It turns out that Marshall Field commissioned Jackson to travel the world photographing specimens for the new museum. Cheers to that, and welcome to the Commons!

William Henry Jackson
Agricultural Building at Night
The Field Museum Library: GN90799d_JWH_001w

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