Have you ever wondered what your grandfather did for fun? While some undoubtedly whittled their lives away, others were out conquering the wilderness. If you’re from Oregon, ol’ grandpa might have even been part of the Mazamas.
Timber!!!! This rare home movie footage was shot in color by Charles L. ‘Buster’ Borklund, Jr. in Taylor and Dixie counties (Florida) during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The Library of Congress presents … the Cardiff Giant! Oh great fun, as are the comments accumulating on this image. See this and 50 more Bain News Service photos from the LOC this week.
A group of people at a drink table in Lysekil park. Is it Calla Curman, wife of Carl Curman, to the left? Help the Swedish National Heritage Board identify these people.
Archival footage brought to you by the Walt Disney Imagineers. Hat tip to the Getty Museum for this great web find. I got sucked into watching the whole series just now of time-lapse photography of the building of Disneyland in Southern California, circa the 1950s.
Put The Source from the National Library of New Zealand on your reading list; it’s news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web.
Starting 11 September, the National Library of Wales brings us Ken Elias: A Retrospective – a celebration of 40 years of painting.
The first trade treaty between the Netherlands and Japan was signed 400 years this August. The National Archief celebrates with a set of images from their archives of Japan.
Cyanotype is among the earliest of photographic processes, and the examples of its use found in the Commons are all also early. Sir John Herschel invented the cyanotype in 1842, and Anna Atkins was its first active practitioner — and perhaps the first female photographer as well. The New York Public Library photograph below is among many of hers held at the NYPL and available in the Commons on Flickr.
You can read a basic description of the cyanotype process on Wikipedia . Mike Ware is among modern improvers on the process. The Flickr group Cyanotypes is devoted to new examples of this very old technique.
Finding cyanotypes — or photographs of any particular type or process — in the Commons, particularly as it grows larger, depends on terminology being in the photographs descriptions or tags … in the language you look for it in. If you’re browsing the Commons or commenting on a Commons photograph, take a moment to add search terms to tags.
All of these images are taken from a Flickr Commons group discussion topic on “Landscapes across the Commons”. Those of us who posted in that topic found that while we knew there was a lot of historical landscape photography in the Commons, it was often not tagged to make it easily searchable. If you find more, please add tags, in English and other languages you may speak, to help later users find it as well.
Hakone Lake, Japan, late 19th century, chosen by Nina.
There is still time to sign up for the FLICC Preservation Institute, a joint venture between Lyrasis, the Library of Congress, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC), and the Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK).
Check out the Powerhouse Museum’s Odditoreum, “an incredibly low-tech ‘exhibition’ with no technology-based interactive experiences and minimal web presence.”
See the Modern Times immersive, a nifty Powerhouse article about an exhibition which is traveling to the State Library of Queensland.
Husbands and Wives: Stories from the Film Archive of the George Eastman House.
A quick rundown of the Brooklyn Museum’s ArtSee, a web app formatted for the iPod Touch 3″ screen.
The Camera Loved Einstein, another in a series of posts about the Smithsonian’s Flickr collection, by Catherine Shteynberg, Smithsonian Photography Initiative.
A Galaxy Collision in Action, an informative post from the Smithsonian’s Chandra X-Ray blog about Stephan’s Quintet.
Happy birthday to the Smithsonian National Zoo’s giant happy panda, Tai Shan! See photos of Tai Shan and his giant birthday cake.
11 July -Mas Exitos, the legendary twice-a-month event held at the Verdugo Bar in Highland Park, comes to the Getty Museum. The Getty has been closed due to wildfires this week, so be sure to call ahead for information about this event.
23 July - Watkins and the Rapiers play at the George Eastman House, part of the Garden Vibes summer concert series.
Like tiles? The Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian delights with <i>sooo</i> many new tile images from convents — including some from Brazil!
I like the images that the Swedish National Heritage Board posts from Carl Curman. From sweeping landscape to portraits, this series always offers a great glimpse into northern European life.
Brooklyn Museum mummy#1 Lady Hor 37.50E being moved, June 2009
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.
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. ;-)
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.
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.
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.
We open this week with views of Portland, Oregon, during the Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1905, courtesy of the Oregon State University Archives. These images are a great complement to the other Flickr Commons expo photos — it’s cool to check out both the similarities to and advances from the prior ones.
The State Library of Queensland’s photo of the week is this sweet dog and boy shot. It’s an interesting mix of an iconic Australian dog breed being held by an American soldier.
