Friday Fun!

The Brooklyn Museum engaged in live tweeting on 23 June when they took four mummies from their collection to be CT scanned at the North Shore University Hospital in Long Island. They used hashtag #mummyCT: their Tweets and with everyone!
See more photos and videos here.

Heard around the Commons:

• The Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans Twitter Art Feed Artist for July 2009: Ranjit Bhatnagar’s “Exquisite Sonnet.” 1stfans members, get yer tweet on for this one!
• The 2nd International m-Libraries Conference in Vancouver is all a-twitter with updates: #mlib09.
• Make it Digital – DigitalNZ’s one-stop shop for questions about creating digital content in New Zealand! This site features questions, ideas, and guides; do drop by and check it out.
• Top museums on Twitter – Jim Richardson reports on how museums are using the popular micro-blogging website Twitter. The Brooklyn Museum is listed as #2.
• Be sure to make a visit to The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web, brought to you every Friday by the National Library of New Zealand. Copyfights!
• What’s in the workshop #2 – Investigate the Powerhouse Museum’s fetish for strange things on wheels.
• The New York Public Library is gearing up for its new website launch. Yay! The NYPL also has some new things in the works and is looking for lab rats.
• Name that film! The George Eastman House shares sleuthing tips.
• NARA and MoMA – See what’s happening with the students of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, from the George Eastman House.
• Aquamarine crystals are the Gemstone of the Month at the Field Museum’s Grainger Hall of Gems.
• The National Librarian, Andrew Green, of the National Library of Wales, will be among those honored by the Gorsedd of Bards at this year’s National Eisteddfod.
• Diwrnod agoriadol y Smithsonian – ahhhhh, no idea what this says, but I liked seeing the Smithsonian being discussed in Welsh. ;-)
• Watch the 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival webcasts this weekend! Welsh music, mariachis, storytelling and poetry.
• Suited for Space: Last Words from the Curator – An engaging blog post reporting on the tribulations of a traveling space exhibit by the Smithsonian Institution.
• SI also reports on how Google Street View was used to solve a crime.
• A Short History of Photography from Cigar Box to Cell Phone, by Merry A. Foresta of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative
• The Swedish National Heritage Board live blogs from its activities during Almedal week. The Board will organize a seminar on e-government and new social media July 2.
• Portraits — and Pot-Shots — in Song: A witty exhibit from the Library of Congress chronicling US Presidential campaign songs.
• Newstead – The State Library of Queensland, Australia, tells you all about this Brisbane suburb.
• Also, Picture Queensland images now available through One Search.
• The Oregon State University Archives reports that William Jasper Kerr, a biography, has been scanned and is now available on ScholarsArchive.
• Win one of the biggest Harry Potter posters in the world in the National Media Museum’s competition.

Go Visit!

12th June to 31st August: The Art Competition for Schools 2009 exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland. See the 53 winning works of budding young talents.

24 June through 22 August: With Malice Toward None: Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibit, a traveling exhibit from the Library of Congress at the California Museum in Sacramento, CA.

Throughout July: The July Film Series is announced at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus Theater, including Key Largo, An American in Paris, and Chinatown.

2 July: Exclusive preview of Soul Power, a film by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte documenting a music festival that unites black American stars with African musicians in Kinshasa, at the National Media Museum.

SHOUT IT OUT! Help keep the New York Public Library open.

Read more about the NYPL’s plight at the Daily News.

Heard around the Commons:

• Vet du hvor bildet er tatt? Last week, the Swedish National Heritage Board asked for help identifying a photo in the Commons. Within 24 hours, the location was determined … and they got a write up on the news!
• Pirates land in Chicago, a photo essay in the Chicago Sun-Times of the Field Museum’s “Real Pirates”.
• The Field’s dead geese help solve mystery of plane in Hudson, an article by the Chicago Tribune.
• Enter the Don McCullin competition at the National Media Museum: Win a signed hardback copy of the book Don McCullin by commenting on one of the photos Don curated for the museum’s Flickr stream.
• Check out the photos of the opening night of 1984, with John Hurt, at the National Media Museum.
• Celebrate the 1,000th Tyrrell image in the Powerhouse Museum’s Flickr stream!
• Valour is explained by the Australian War Memorial.
• Installing the Summer Shows, insight into the behind-the-scenes work at the George Eastman House.
• I Do Solemnly Swear … Got photos of the 2009 U.S. Presidential Inauguration? Share them with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
• Picnic pest is focus of a Smithsonian exhibition — A write-up from the Philadelphia Enquirer on an intriguing photography exhibit.
• Check out some new National Air and Space Museum Photos (Smithsonian).
• Meanwhile, back on earth … A Slideshow, curated Flickr photos, by the Smithsonian Photography Initiative’s Marvin Heiferman.
• Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, from Sunday Arts.
• Check out this interview by the Examiner of Dr. Patrick Amsellem, the Associate Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum.
• The Sounds of American Life and Legend are tapped for the Seventh Annual National Recording Registry, from the Library of Congress.

Friday Fun!

The History of Household Technology, from the Library of Congress

Go Visit!

Now through 30 June — 1969: The Year of Gay Liberation at the New York Public Library. The 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York, is this month. There’s also a collection of GLBT books on display at the D.C. Public Library. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!

12-14 June – Fantastic Films Weekend at the National Media Museum. Oohhhhhhhhh, scary movies!

13 June –Garden Fest 2009: The Scenic Route, the annual all day family-friendly event presented by the Horticulture Services Division (HSD) at the Smithsonian Institution.

13 June — Alice Waters book signing at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

15 June – Kick-Off Event: Juneteenth DC 2009 at the D.C. Public Library. Featuring performances, remarks and a reception in celebration of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. More info on Juneteenth here.

16 June – What Is a Conversation Piece? at the National Galleries of Scotland. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, explores this fascinating type of art, which is such an important tradition within European painting.

The National Media Museum has uploaded a new set of photographs from its archives to The Commons — but these aren’t images they’ve chosen themselves: these are guest-curated, by noted British war photographer Don McCullin. As an accompaniment to the NMM’s major exhibition of McCullin’s work, Don McCullin Selects … presents McCullin’s

personal selection of photographs from the museum’s collection, revealing how these sites were recorded by earlier photographers such as Francis Frith and Maxime Du Camp.

Rudolf Lehnert & Ernst Landrock, 'Karnak - The Amon Temple'

Check out McCullin’s curated Commons set, and make plans to see the exhibition In England, on  until September 27.

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.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Probably the most iconic mother of all, the Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange.

George Eastman House

C. & N.W. R.R. Cloe Weaver, mother of four children, employed as a helper at the roundhouse, Clinton, Iowa, by Jack Delano.

Library of Congress

Calla Lundström Curman — writer, editor, feminist, and conservationist — with her children, Sigurd and Carolina Curman.

Swedish Heritage Board

Actress Helen Twelvetrees and her son Jack Woody.

State Library of New South Wales

Aboriginal family near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 1919.

Musée McCord

Miccosukee mother rocks her baby in a hammock.

State Library and Archives of Florida

(more…)

Commons institutions won awards at the Media and Technology 20th Annual MUSE Awards, held on April 30 at the Loews Philadelphia!

Podcasts
Gold: George Eastman House for General Collection Podcasts.

Video
Silver: National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution) for Presidents in Waiting.

Interactive Kiosks
Bronze: Library of Congress for New Visitor Experience.

Multimedia Installations
Hon. Mention: National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) for Digital Wayfinding.

Community
Hon. Mention: Royal Observatory, Greenwich (National Maritime Museum), for Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

Also Heard around the Commons:

• How We ‘May’ Protect Our Cultural Treasures: from the Library of Congress.
• The Powerhouse Museum celebrates its Commons collection by awarding copies of ‘Then and now: stories from the Commons’ to their blog commenters!
• They also announce their acquisition of the Bruno Benini archive.
• The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database administered by the Law Library of Congress, wins an Excellence in Government award.
• TIMBER! The Oregon State University Archives presents historic mill pictures in the Harold Frodsham Photographic Collection.
• The Smithsonian’s Chandra blog resolves a galactic mystery and interviews Eli Bressert, the guy responsible for making the Chandra images. Wow. That’s a cool job.
• SQUEE! Cute overload with baby leopards at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.
• Podcasts: ‘Face-to-Face’, from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian.
• Petrina Foti, Computers Collection at the NMAH, Smithsonian, processes objects from Ralph Baer, the Father of the Video Game.
• The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web, every Friday, from the National Library of New Zealand.
• ‘Visualizing search data: What’s the right amount of visibility?’ from the New York Public Library.
• ‘MW2009 Clouds, Switches, APIs, Geolocation and Galleries – a shoddy summary’, by Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum.
• Call for submissions to the 2009 Bradford Animation Festival by the National Media Museum.
• The State Library of Queensland, Australia, reports on the success of ‘Discovering Queensland’, their community history course. They’ll hold another in October.
• Podcast of the DC Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting, held on March 25, 2009
• Notes from Anzac Day, by the Australian War Memorial.
• Join the Museum Twibe. It’s a Twitter thang.
• Sowing Culture: an interesting blog on history that we ran across this week when they linked to our Morse post.

A Call to Action:

Enter The Smithsonian Institution’s YouTube Video Contest. Tell them how to position the Smithsonian for the New Media Generation.

Go Visit!

Just opened – I Do Solemnly Swear: Photographs of the 2009 Inauguration, at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. See some of them online at CNN.

April 30 through May 4 - drop by the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Services booth at the American Association of Museums annual meeting in Philadelphia.

May 2 - Target First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum; enjoy free programs of art and entertainment from 5–11 p.m.

May 7 - Star Trek IMAX, the new film by J.J. Abrams (Lost), screens at midnight at the National Media Museum! Beam me up, Scotty, with a racy, young James T. Kirk, too.

May 7 - Poet Laureate Kay Ryan reads at the Library of Congress in the Coolidge Auditorium.

Throughout May – Asian Pacific American Heritage Month at the Library of Congress.

Peter Henry Emerson
A Winter’s Morning, 1900
National Media Museum

view + comment on Flickr

Heard around the Commons:

• Anzac Day across the Commons. The Australia War Memorial has an excellent tribute and a report on the Simpson Prize awarded for Anzac Day.
• The John Oxley Library (State Library of Queensland, Australia) records responses on the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples and also reports on the Anzac Day presentations.
• The Library of Congress reports that the World Digital Library received 14 million page views between Tuesday and Wednesday its first week.
• For Earth Day, the Oregon State University Archive recommends “The dawn of the color photograph: Albert Kahn’s archives of the planet” by David Okuefuna. Check out more of the OSU’s Earth Day resources here.
• Opposing viewpoints laid out at the Smithsonian 2.0 Forum.
• The WaPo reports on the 77 American self-portraits now on display at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: ‘Reflections/Refractions: Self-Portraiture in the 20th Century‘
• We Are What We Photograph: an article by Merry A. Foresta, Smithsonian Photography Initiative.
• Lincoln’s Other White House: a podcast from the D.C. Public Library.
• The Spider and the Web: an online experiment by Dan Cohen. He posts an item from the Smithsonian Institution to Twitter, asking for it to be identified. I’m anxious to see the results.
• Smithsonian Institution Facebook Page Fans: How to add their updates to your newsfeed.
• Let Freedom Ring: an article by the Smithsonian Photography Initiative on what’s legal to photograph.
• How stuff happens: H.R.586 – Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009: to direct the Librarian of Congress and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to carry out a joint project at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture to collect video and audio recordings of personal histories and testimonials of individuals who participated in the Civil Rights movement, and for other purposes.
• The Powerhouse Museum describes the assembly of the astrographic camera.
• Meet the conservator at the Brooklyn Museum: Carolyn Tomkiewicz explains the process of arranging the debris.
• The Brooklyn Museum approves an API key for an iPhone app.
• A study by Simon Tanner at the Mellon Foundation on the cost and policy models adapted by US arts museums in arriving at pricing structures for delivering imaging and rights services.
• Don’t miss the Friday wrap-up of digital news and notes that the National Library of New Zealand puts out weekly.
• The Telegraph and Argus discovers hidden treasures at the National Media Museum.

More Info from the Museums and the Web 2009 Conference:

Shelley at the Brooklyn Museum says, Paula Bray and Seb Chan from Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum came to visit us on Monday. They just produced a Blurb book from their materials on the Flickr Commons and Brooklyn had done a Blurb book for Click! so we made a trade!

Brooklyn Museum

With the Powerhouse peeps (Seb and Paula) at dinner with the dinos in the Australian Museum.

Shelley Bernstein

Go Visit!

23-25 April 2009 – The Rochester International Film Festival at the Dryden Theater, George Eastman House – Celebrating the festival’s 50th year, this event hosts films from around the world.

Through April 26 – Photographs by Andy Lock at the George Eastman House.

27 April – An EPA official discusses global approach to environmental challenges at the Whittall Pavilion, located on the ground floor of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building – this event is free.

28 April – The Federal Writers’ Project will be the focus of an excerpted film screening and panel discussion, “Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project,” in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress.

Starting 30 April – Directions by Walead Beshty, at the Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian Institution). “Beshty’s mesmerizing photographs blend an enduring fascination with modernist visual culture and an astute inquiry into the nature of photography.”

Heard around the Commons:

Chandra telescope x-ray
A Young Pulsar Shows its Hand, 2009
Smithsonian Institution: PSR B1509-58

This pulsar is spinning around almost 7 times a second and has a magnetic field at its surface estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. It spans 150 light years. In other space news, the Smithsonian’s Chandra blog asks, “Is it easy being green?”

• Again, happy Commonsversary to the Powerhouse Museum!
• Learn more about the Powerhouse’ Commons images impact on their image sales.
• Also, Paula at the Powerhouse informs us on the future of image licensing.
• Courtney Johnson, of the National Library of New Zealand, announces the call for contributions for the 2009 National Digital Forum Conference.
• The Library of Congress, UNESCO and 32 partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library on 21 April 2009.
• The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Oregon State University renew their bond. The OSU Archives’ blog has lots of information on this historic event.
• Jacki Rand, formerly of the Smithsonian, discusses what it’s like to be a Native American working on a committee of white men to plan an Indian museum, from the History News Network.
• Art museums in U.S. hope that technology will sustain interest, from the AP. The Brooklyn Museum gets a mention.
• Also, the Brooklyn Museum discusses the results of their online quiz.
• The History Engine looks like a fun website. Hat tip to OSU.
• Marvin Heiferman, of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, asks, “What should reality look like?”
• Gays Picket White House: a 1965 film from the Smithsonian.
• Jazz Oral Histories: the Smithsonian presents a number of clips from jazz legends.
• Voices of Slavery: Did you know the Library of Congress has these podcasts online?
• A wrap-up of the State Library of Queensland, Australia’s, 75th anniversary of the John Oxley Library.
• 11,000 Easter Eggs!
• Where’s Smithy?

Go Visit!

14 Apr 2009 – Imperial Superimpositions: The Graphing of Empire at the National Galleries of Scotland, a talk by Lee Fontanella, Carnegie Centenary Professor, University of Stirling. The photographing of Spain by nineteenth-century British photographer Charles Clifford may be understood as a visual narrative in which the image of Empire is underscored.

15-18 April 2009 A Northwest History and Heritage Extravaganza, including the 2009 Oregon Heritage Conference, the Pacific Northwest History Conference and the annual meetings of the Northwest Archivists and the Northwest Oral History Association, will take place in Portland.

Through 19 Apr 2009 – Bradford Babies at the National Media Museum, is a celebration of the babies and their families in our local community, past and present.