Heard around the Commons:

• Catch the National Library of New Zealand’s blog every Friday for a digital library carnival.
• The Smithsonian Institution (SI) discusses museum transparency and the dashboard.
• The National Museum of American History (SI) muses about the future of digital history.
• The SI also launches the Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life.
• The Washington Post posts a great video on the great cats of the SI.
• Baby anteater born at the National Zoo (SI)!
• Powerhouse Museum asks, “Why photograph signs?”
• View the Library of Congress’s webcast “Digitizing American Imprints.”
• Watch Historic Panoramic Photographs from the State Library of Queensland, Australia — a gem of a show with insight into the library’s processes.

Recent uploads to the Commons:

Everything from the Swedish National Heritage Board is new! Try out this set of Carl Curman’s travels in Denmark, Holland and Germany. He was a physician and a scientist who did a lot of traveling abroad in Europe, to study health resorts, art and architecture.

Carl Curman – Europe

While you’re visiting Europe, the Biblioteca de Arte–Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian has another set of photos from the Mário Novais studio, all about exhibitions: agricultural, farming, industrial or service photography.

Exposições de cariz económico

Swing by France to see magnificent castles from the Bibliothèque de Toulouse.

Châteaux

The Oregon State University Archives takes you to Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Whiddy Island

Don’t drink too much, though, or you’ll ride off the rails. The Nationaal Archief documents all sorts of troubles.

Ongelukken / Accidents

Did you know that the US Army set up logging camp in Oregon to build spruce airplanes for World War I? The Oregon State University Archives tells us how.

Gerald Williams Collection: Spruce Production Division

Don’t forget, all photos from the Nantucket Historical Association are new. This actor’s colony escaped the stifling city heat in summer for anything goes on the island.

‘Sconset Actors Colony

The State Library of New South Wales presents … Katharine Hepburn!

Film & cinema

Derek Powazek’s session at SXSW mentions the Brooklyn’s Museum’s Click! exhibition.

Click! at SXSW

Another captivating video from the Powerhouse Museum. The Powerhouse keeps adding to its Tyrrell Collection, too, where the photo in this video is from.

Exploring Martin Place

More scientific women from the Smithsonian! You’ll enjoy Adventures in the Morgue.

Women in Science

Go Visit!

20 Mar.–24 Apr.: Attend an interactive 6-week Queensland history course at the State Library of Queensland, Australia.

Heard around the Commons:

• What does it take to join the Commons? ArchivesNext asked Tiah Edmunson-Morton of the Oregon State University Archives exactly that!
• The Brooklyn Museum has its own API for its web collection! Read the museum’s announcement and visit the API site for more details. The National Library of New Zealand also has its own API.
• Elliot Young, at the National Library of New Zealand’s blog, explains Subversive Git, a good summary of version control systems.
• The Powerhouse Museum tells a great tale about a remixed photograph from its Flickr collection.
• Try a book review of Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Powerhouse Museum and Its Precursors, 1880-2005, by Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber.
• Seb Chan discusses a number of tools at the Powerhouse Museum’s Fresh and New(er) blog: Readability – reducing clutter with a bookmarklet, QR Code and a Google Analytics Report Enhancer.
• Did you know the George Eastman House held an Academy Awards 2009 party?
• The wrap-up post for the Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptian dig. We’ll be interviewing someone on their team about the dig later this month.
• In the news: the Library of Congress tells CBS all about data rot.
• Panda Time! Learn about the Smithsonian Photography Initiative and Pandas (video).
• Also, the Smithsonian Institution launches a new blog on photography. As new photos are uploaded to the Commons, the Smithsonian asks archivists, researchers, and curators to talk about some of the fun stories in the pictures or behind the scenes.

Recent uploads from the Commons:

Oregon State University Archives posts a magnificent series of photos depicting Celilo Falls on the Columbia River prior to the construction of the Dalles Dam in 1957. The falls were once Native American fishing grounds. OSU provides a wealth of links and resources to discover more about this buried treasure.

Gerald W. Williams Collection: Celilo Falls

Get your locomotive on with Paths of Iron, train photography from the Estúdio Mário Novais, archived by the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

Companhia dos Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses

Discover the architecture of Gourdon, a small town in southwestern France with a rich prehistoric past, from the Bibliothèque de Toulouse,.

Gourdon

Fascinating group and crowd scenes by William Hall Raine, a Wellington, New Zealand, photographer. This is first in a number of Raine sets from the National Library of New Zealand.

William Hall Raine

The Powerhouse Museum adds to its Phillips Collection. Read the write-up at the museum’s blog.

Phillips Glass Plate Negatives Collection

The Smithsonian Institution adds to the corpus of Lincoln photographs. See these treasures in person at the One Life: The Mask of Lincoln exhibit.

Abraham Lincoln

More new uploads from the State Archives of Florida … put on a happy face!

Florida Commerce

It’s almost International Women’s Day! Suffragettes galore from the Library of Congress.

News in the 1910s

Go Visit!

Now Hiring: Media Assistant for the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Help the SI use social media!

13-28 Mar.: The Bradford International Film Festival at the National Media Museum. Experience film from Mexico, Latvia, Japan, France, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States.

International Women’s Day is celebrated annually in March. The women’s suffrage movement changed so much for so many women. Across the Commons, we see the advances women have made in the last century . . .

Hedwig Reicher, a German actress, poses as Columbia, a poetic name for the United States and a symbolic personification of the feminine. See all the Commons suffrage photos here.

Library of Congress

Thanks to the political achievements of the women of the 1910s, woman are . . .

Athletes . . . Women’s athletics and gymnastics debuted at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.

Nationaal Archief

Scientists! Maria Skłodowska-Curie in 1934: the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in different science fields.

Smithsonian Institution

Aviators . . . Nancy Bird Walton became the youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot’s license. See another famous aviatrix, Amy Johnson.

State Library of New South Wales

Actresses . . . The best-known actress of the golden age of Portuguese cinema was Beatriz Costa. There are many actresses represented in the Commons.

Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Politicians themselves! First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, 1943, with General MacArthur’s wife, Jean Marie MacArthur, on an Australian tour.

State Library of Queensland, Australia

Rosie the Riveter! During World War II, women worked in manufacturing plants as men went off to fight war.

Library of Congress

Happy International Women’s Day! Honor the women in your life on the 8th. Find more photographs of women in the Commons.

The Smithsonian Institution has a long tradition with inaugural events, with its museums serving as the sites for many of the inaugural balls, festivities and exhibitions. This year, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative wants your contributions to click! photography changes everything: History in the Making.. You may submit your photographs and stories of the recent US election and inauguration that explore how photography influences our understanding of the world. It’s exciting to that the Smithsonian is on the forefront of encouraging a populist inclusion of modern times in their storied archives. Please, if you have any images and stories, take a trip to their website and submit them!

One of the activities we hold in our Flickr group, Flickr Commons, is a Tag/Research/Explore (TRE) campaign, where we focus on a subcurated collection and ask our members to add descriptive tags to the images, as well as notes and independent research. We also encourage members to present their findings in the group. This weekend, we started a TRE campaign for the Smithsonian’s Inauguration set, which we invited into our group’s photo pool for our member’s ease of access.

On this photo of President Clinton’s inauguration, an astute visitor noted that the photo, listed as taken in 1993, was actually taken in 1997, discovered by cross-referencing images on an archived version of the Clinton presidency’s website.

Smithsonian Institution

People have also uncovered some trivia. Did you know that Jackie Kennedy designed her own inauguration gown?

Smithsonian Institution

Join us in the campaign to add your valuable insights to these treasures!